Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argued Saturday that the incoming Trump administration should “act fast” to implement massive changes at the National Institutes of Health, including replacing as many as 600 people at the federal agency.
“We need to act fast, and we want to have those people in place on Jan. 20, so that on Jan. 21, 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave,” Kennedy said during an appearance at the Genius Network Annual Event in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The Democrat-turned-Trump-ally has long argued that federal health agencies have been “captured” by the pharmaceutical industry that they are supposed to regulate, likening it to “corruption” that has had a negative impact on the health and safety of Americans.
Kennedy, 70, noted at the Genius Network event that he’s working to raise $10 million before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration to help fill key Department of Health and Human Services roles, according to ABC News.
“We need to be able to respond very quickly and need to have a really, really good crack staff right now – we have the people, [but] we need to get them paid, we need to get them, housing in Florida, so they can be right there when we walk into these transition meetings day after day,” he said.
Kennedy also provided insight into how Trump, 78, is going about considering people to staff his incoming administration.
“He comes into the meeting and he very quickly – you know, there are eight giant screens and each person has a picture of themselves on the screen, they have a biography next to them, you can press a button and see three different clips of that person …and he goes through them very very quickly and he says, ‘I want that guy,’” the former environmental lawyer said.
“He listens to what people say, but he makes the decisions and he gets very, very firm ideas. And he decides very quickly. And the meetings are very quick when he comes in,” Kennedy explained.
The former presidential candidate noted that himself, his daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk are among the people in the room when Trump is making personnel decisions.
“These are all alpha people,” Kennedy said. “They’re, you know, they have very strong ideas about what should happen, but [Trump] makes the decisions.”
Kennedy is expected to have some sort of major health-policy related role in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump’s White House transition co-chair Howard Lutnick, however, dismissed the possibility of RFK Jr. becoming HHS secretary prior to the election.
“That’s not what he wants to do,” Lutnick said last month. “He just wants data, and he wants to prove things [about vaccines] are wrong. And he says, ‘If I can’t prove they’re wrong, that’s fine. But if I can, I can save millions of Americans’ lives and make their lives better.’”
The Post has reached out to Kennedy’s team for comment.
