Will RFK Jr. give Trump a shot in the arm?

On Aug. 23, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump for president. Kennedy revealed that Trump had offered him a role in a second administration on issues related to health care, food and drug policies.

“This time,” Kennedy said, he was “choosing to believe” the former president would deliver — a reference to an unfulfilled promise in 2017 to appoint him as chair of a commission on vaccine safety. RFK Jr. discussed his opposition to U.S. aid to Ukraine and the rise in chronic diseases, which he attributed to the toxic environment, prescription drugs and processed food. He did not mention vaccines.

Trump praised Kennedy as a “beloved” person, “respected by everybody,” but didn’t comment on an appointment.

Kennedy and Trump differ on many issues, but they have well-deserved reputations as peddlers of false and dangerous allegations about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Their claims play well with the MAGA base, but they raise the possibility that in the general election RFK’s endorsement will give Trump a pain in the butt instead of a shot in the arm.

As recently as July 2023, Kennedy told members of a House Judiciary Subcommittee that he was up-to-date on COVID-19 shots and has never told the public to “avoid vaccination.” Kennedy’s false claims, however, include that the 1918 influenza pandemic and HIV originated in vaccine research, that autism is linked to childhood vaccines, and that COVID shots may have caused “suspicious” deaths among seniors.

Asked in 2021 about CDC schedules for childhood immunization, Kennedy declared that if he saw someone carrying a baby, he would say “Don’t vaccinate that baby.” And he would encourage his fellow Americans to “do a civil disobedience every day” by confronting “everybody on it.”

Kennedy has also suggested that anti-depressants are responsible for the increase in school shootings in the U.S., and that a particular herbicide helps explain why an increasing number of young people are identifying as transgender. To boost his muscle mass, Kennedy, who is 70 years old, uses testosterone replacement therapy, a treatment (dubbed “legal steroids”) that can increase the risk of infertility, blood clots, heart attacks and strokes.

In 2015, then-presidential candidate Trump revealed that he had never taken a flu shot: “I don’t like the idea of injecting bad stuff in your body, which is basically what they do.” He indicated as well that a two-year-old child of one of his employees was vaccinated to protect against infectious diseases “and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very sick and is now autistic.”

In December 2020, at a White House summit hailing the success of Project Warp Speed in producing a COVID vaccine in record time, President Trump described the shot as “verifiably safe and effective… It will quickly and dramatically reduce deaths and hospitalizations.” When at a rally in 2021 he recommended taking the vaccine — “I did it. It’s good” — audible boos emerged from the crowd. “You’ve got your freedoms,” Trump responded, “but I happened to take the vaccine.”

After he left the White House, as vaccine skepticism grew among Trump Republicans, and especially after declaring his candidacy for a second term, Trump’s tone and tune changed. In September 2023, he declared he was not proud of the vaccine. “I’m not talking about it," he said. "But what I did do is I got something done for that specific thing.”

In July 2024, in a telephone conversation with RFK Jr., whom he was courting, Trump said, “I agree with you, man. Something’s wrong with that whole system....Remember, I want to do small doses. Small doses when you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a, you know, 10 pound or 20-pound baby.”

That same month, in a speech to the Christian Faith and Freedom Coalition, Trump promised he would “not give a penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or mask mandate.”

Trump didn’t say — or doesn’t know — that the federal government supplies only about 10 percent of public-school budgets. And federal officials have limited ability to dictate to states and localities how to spend those funds. All 50 states and D.C., moreover, require public school students to be vaccinated for some infectious diseases. Every state provides medical exemptions; 15 states permit philosophical or personal exemptions. As the number of exemptions has grown, measles, mumps and rubella shots have dipped below the 95 percent threshold for herd immunity, increasing the likelihood of infectious disease outbreaks.

RFK Jr., it is worth noting, indicated that if elected president he had “no intention of amending the CDC childhood recommended vaccine schedule” — and “would not use the federal government to force state governments or schools to change their policy on vaccines.”

Americans remain sharply divided about the safety and effectiveness of COVID vaccines. But 88 percent of them believe the benefits of the MMR vaccination outweigh the risks, the same as in 2019. Although the percentage of Americans who support MMR vaccine mandates for public school children has dropped from 82 percent to 70 percent — almost all of the decline attributable to Republicans — mandate supporters remain a substantial majority. Few of them, we can assume, support Trump’s threats to end federal funding of public education.

If there is a debate on Sept. 10, Kamala Harris should ask Trump what position he plans to give Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and remind voters of the threat the former president poses to the health, education and welfare of the nation’s children.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor at Cornell University.