Anti-Vaccine Activists Say They're 'Advising' Trump Transition Team On Health Policy
As President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team announce selections for various government positions, multiple anti-vaccine figures with a history of spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines and COVID-19 have claimed to be consulting or attempting to consult with Trump’s team — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — about public health policy.
On November 14, Trump announced that he would nominate Kennedy for HHS secretary, implying that Kennedy would stop what Trump called “deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health.” Kennedy, a former presidential candidate, is a known anti-vaccine activist who has spread a range of conspiracy theories — including conspiracy theories about 5G towers, Ukrainian biolabs, chemtrails, and supposed microchips in vaccines — and has associated with QAnon figures.
Since Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Kennedy for HHS, anti-vaccine media figures known for spreading conspiracy theories have claimed to be consulting with the Trump team regarding HHS and public health policy:
- Robert Malone is a doctor known for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and its treatments, and he has ties to other conspiracy theorists. He toldThe Epoch Times-affiliated outlet NTD that he had “spoken at length with some of the people that are very close to Bobby [Kennedy] that are involved in the transition and the planning” about “major structural changes across HHS.” On a podcast a few days later, Malone went further, claiming that he had even been “asked by somebody in the transition team … to lay out thoughts about how [the] FDA could be reformed” and speculating that he might find himself “on the inside.”
- Thomas Renz is an attorney who has pursued litigation over, and pushed misinformation about, COVID vaccines, and he has partnered with QAnon figures for some of those efforts. On his podcast, Renz said regarding vaccines that he would “write out a couple of different things … so that, you know, day one, my recommendation for a few different things and send it over” to Kennedy, with whom he said he had “spoken at length a few different times.” (Renz did note that he doesn’t “know whether [Kennedy] will listen or not.“)
- Mikki Willis is the director behind the viral COVID-19 conspiracy theory videoPlandemic and has been friendly with at least one QAnon figure. On social media, he claimed that “many of [Trump’s] new appointees are personal friends of” his and that he was “privy to private conversations taking place behind the scenes, and what I’m hearing is profoundly inspiring.”
Anti-vaccine figures were also seemingly involved with the transition team ahead of the 2024 presidential election. While Kennedy worked with Trump’s transition team ahead of the election, Charlene Bollinger — a fringe commentator and anti-vaccine activist whose social media account has spread antisemitism and QAnon conspiracy theories in addition to targeting vaccines — told One America News that she was “working with a number of people” in the transition team “to put together something beautiful so that Bobby Kennedy can roll out his vision and we get to be a part of this.” A few days after the election, Malone also told CBS News that “he had spoken with many of the aides from some of the ‘at least four different HHS transition teams’ under Trump … in recent weeks about the future of the department.”
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
