President-elect Donald Trump dismissed issues about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine skepticism endangering youngsters, saying Monday that his decide to guide the Division of Well being and Human Providers might be much less excessive than critics have warned.
“I believe he’s going to be a lot much less radical than you’d suppose. I believe he’s bought a really open thoughts, or I wouldn’t have put him there,” Trump stated of Kennedy when chatting with reporters.
As lately as final 12 months, Kennedy repeated the debunked claim that vaccines trigger autism.
Trump then appeared to recommend that international locations with fewer vaccine necessities are higher off.
“However there are issues,” he stated.” We don’t do in addition to lots of different nations, and people nations use nothing.”
Spokespeople for Trump and his presidential transition crew didn’t instantly reply when requested to make clear what Trump meant and to which international locations he was referring.
He additionally stated he’s a “believer” within the polio vaccine ― regardless of the current media discovering Kennedy has been working with a lawyer who’s making an attempt to get the Meals and Drug Administration to droop its use for youngsters.
“Nicely, I’m a giant believer in it. And I believe all the pieces ought to be checked out, however I’m a giant believer within the polio vaccine,” Trump stated of almost 70-year-old polio preventative, which has almost eradicated a lethal, paralyzing illness within the U.S. that when contaminated some 16,000 People a 12 months.
His feedback Monday recommend extra willingness to place the polio vaccine underneath some sort of overview. Earlier this month, when requested about vaccines throughout an look on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump described the polio vaccine as “the best factor,” saying: “If someone instructed me to do away with the polio vaccine, they’re going to need to work actual laborious to persuade me.”
As for colleges mandating vaccines, Trump stated Monday: “I don’t like mandates. I’m not a giant mandate individual. So you already know, I used to be towards mandates, principally Democrat governors did the mandates, and so they did a really poor factor. You realize on reflection they made a giant mistake, having to do with the training of kids.”
