A meeting was held that was intended to introduce Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy to staffers at the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). The meeting did not go the way Kennedy had planned. Reportedly, Kennedy’s remarks were so off the wall that people began walking out of the meeting. Kennedy’s appointment to the Trump administration was a shocking one because he has a long, tainted history of controversial comments and has made it clear he is anti-vaccine.
Measles Outbreak
During his confirmation, Kennedy attempted to sway Senators into believing that he was not anti-vaccine, but he was met with his own words, such as “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.” Despite all the controversy surrounding him, Kennedy managed to get a majority vote of 52-48. Since taking office, Kennedy has faced criticism after a measles outbreak and the deaths of two unvaccinated children. Dozens of children have been hospitalized due to the outbreak.
“Autism Epidemic”
Kennedy garnered more criticism after claiming he would be able to prove the cause of what he called an “autism epidemic.” He also vocally supported the layoffs of thousands of federal employees. Kennedy gave a 40-minute speech on Friday to FDA staffers. Two staffers, who attended the meeting, supplied an audio transcript of Kennedy’s meeting to Politico.
Kennedy Talks Deep State
“President Trump always talks about the Deep State and the media, you know, disparages him and says that he’s paranoid,” Kennedy said. “But the Deep State is real. And it’s not, you know, just George Soros and Bill Gates and a bunch of nefarious individuals sitting together in a room and plotting the, you know, the destruction of humanity.”
He said “every institution that’s created by human beings” is inevitably captured by powerful interests, and urged FDA employees to take advantage of a four-year period under his leadership where he vowed that the Department of Health and Human Services would not be subjected to undue influence and would listen to “dissidents.” He would then go on to repeat his claims that Americans were much healthier when he was a child.
RFK Jr. Insults FDA Staffers
Kennedy also made off-the-cuff comments about CIA experiments on human mind control. He also accused the staffers he was addressing of being “sock puppets” for the industry they regulate. He referenced Project MKUltra as well as the CIA’s Miligram experiment, which tested participants’ willingness to inflict electric shocks on each other when ordered to do so.
“Because of my family’s commitment to these issues, I spent 200 hours at Wassaic Home for the Retarded when I was in high school,” Kennedy said, in referring to the Wassaic State School for the Mentally Retarded in Wassaic, New York. “So, I was seeing people with intellectual disabilities all the time. I never saw anybody with autism.”
FDA Staffers Walk Out
Kennedy only briefly mentioned the layoffs across the FDA, even though they truly hampered the agency. Several FDA staffers were shocked by his remarks. Many staffers found their boss’s comments alarming and disheartening and began walking out of the room where Kennedy’s speech was being aired.
