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RFK Jr says he will ‘actively’ campaign for Trump, teases ‘other Democrats’ to be named soon

August 26, 2024 | | Print Article

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. detailed how his support for former President Donald Trump was more than just an endorsement as he teased that “other Democrats” would be following suit.

Friday in Arizona, the Democrat turned Independent shook up the presidential race as he suspended his own campaign to back the GOP leader to avoid being a spoiler risking a win for Vice President Kamala Harris. After joining Trump at a rally and a flurry of social media activity, Kennedy explained the role he would be taking on in the campaign and that he wouldn’t be alone.

“I’m going to be campaigning actively,” he said during a sit down on “Fox News Sunday” with host Shannon Bream. “I think President Trump is going to make a series of announcements about other Democrats who are joining his campaign, and you know, I want to make America healthy again, and so does President Trump. So those are objectives.”

After Bream had referenced an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal that suggested the president avoid joint appearances and “promises about the futures,” Kennedy sounded off, “The Wall Street Journal may be worried about shareholder value for pharmaceutical companies, and I think, you know, I talked specifically to President Trump about that issue, and he said that he wanted to leave, as his legacy, healthy children, and that, you know, that he was unconcerned about the other implications.”

Earlier in the discussion, the host had brought up Kennedy’s interest in seeing a change in agencies like the CDC, FDA, and NIH and asked “Is it fair to say that you would try to dismantle some of those organizations?”

To that, the environmental attorney contended, “No, I wouldn’t dismantle them. I would change the focus and I would end the corruption. I would — right now, 75% of the FDA’s budget is coming from pharmaceutical companies. That is a perverse incentive.”

“In NIH…scientists and officials in NIH who work on drug development, who incubate drugs for the pharmaceutical company, get to collect lifetime royalties from those products. These are regulators. They’re supposed to be looking for problems in those products. We have these agencies that have become sock puppets for the industries they’re supposed to regulate. They’re not really interested in public health,” he went on.

“Everybody — the most profitable thing today in America is a sick child,” asserted Kennedy.

The former presidential candidate’s suggestion about the amount of the FDA’s budget tied to pharmaceutical companies prompted a spokesperson to release a statement that read in part, “This figure is not accurate as industry user fees only make up about 47% of the FDA’s total agency budget.”

Author and advocate Calley Means highlighted this statement as he decried, “You actually can’t make this up. In response to the claim that 50% of the @US_FDA’s budget comes from pharma (a terrible incentive…), the agency released an official statement saying it is only 47%…An executive order should be signed tomorrow making this 0. Also: over 70% of the FDA budget to *review drugs* comes from pharma user fees. I can assure you: [bureaucracies] are incentivized and built to grow. And as a statement of economic fact — the growth of pharma grows the FDA.”

“And we need to end those perverse incentives,” Kennedy told Bream. “We need to get the corruption out of FDA, out of NIH, out of the CDC and make them function as they’re supposed to function, which is to protect public health and particularly children’s health.”

He also reiterated his rationale for dropping out of the race and explained, “It became clear to me that I did not have a path to victory. Sixteen months of censorship, of not being able to get on any network really except for Fox, and I had — in fact, when — when Ross Perot ran in the 10 months that he ran, he had 34 appearances on the networks. I had two appearances in months.”

While detractors, including some of his own family members, displayed their Trump Derangement Syndrome as a result of the endorsement, Kennedy’s new active role on the campaign saw him lay out “What ‘MAGA’ really means,” in a statement that described “a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with hope and a belief in itself,” as he pursued the goal to “Make America Healthy Again.”

The entirety of his interview with Bream can be viewed below via Fox News:

(Video Credit: Fox News)

Kevin Haggerty
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