What Is Donald Trump’s Cabinet Planning for America?
46:37 Share

Donald Trump has started building his cabinet, and it's already set to become one of the most extreme in American history. One of Trump's picks is Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Gaetz is a longtime MAGA loyalist who was among the fiercest allies in Trump's attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And although he has denied all allegations, Gaetz is also the former subject of a sex trafficking investigation run by the department that he has now been chosen to lead.

And then there's Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former third-party presidential candidate and anti-vax political scion who was promised to roll back a litany of food, health, and pharmaceutical regulations in his projected role as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Both Kennedy and Gates could dramatically alter the scope, aim, and makeup of the federal government. But what might that look like? Today on our show, we're welcoming two guests —

First, Dexter Filkins joins the show to discuss Gates's road to power. And then we'll talk to Claire Malone about what we can expect from a health system managed by RFK Jr. You're listening to The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

Hey, Dexter. Thanks so much for being here. Hi there. Earlier this year, you profiled Matt Gaetz for the magazine, and you described him as one of the most brazen, controversial, and influential figures in the Republican Party. What was your first reaction to the news that Trump wants Gaetz to be the next attorney general? I mean, I'm astonished, of course, but that was my initial reaction. But I think

On reflection, I think it makes sense for what Trump wants to do. And I think what he's been pretty clear about doing. So in just seven years, Gates has risen from a first term congressman to, if confirmed, the country's chief law enforcement officer. Could you start by just describing the road that has led Gates to this point?

Yeah, he's from the Florida panhandle. He comes from a very wealthy family and a very politically prominent family. His father was a senior member of the state legislature and owned a big booming home health care business. And so Gates, over the years, has given off the impression that

He's a spoiled rich kid, and there's certainly aspects of him that fit that profile because he had a pretty wild youth, but he always managed to kind of stay out of trouble. Went to law school, practiced law very briefly, ran for the state legislature, won, saw the opening in Congress, and in 2016 became a congressman. He was elected when Trump was elected. He was very much, he came in on Trump's coattails.

That's when the relationship began, and I think Gates has been obliged to Trump from the get-go. It's a very strong relationship. And ever since then, I would describe him as a purely modern political figure in the sense that if in the old days,

A junior member of Congress just elected would kind of keep his head down, not draw too much attention to himself, focus on a couple of issues and, you know, be very serious guy and hope that he could kind of work his way up and get better committee assignments. I mean, all that's like, you know, that sounds like it's a thousand years ago.

Matt Gaetz came in to the legislature in Florida, but also to Congress, determined to get publicity for himself. And he got it. And he used that notoriety as leverage to get what he wanted out of Congress and in Congress. And he's been, he's been, you got to hand it to him. He's been very effective in doing that. But he's a purely modern political animal.

So you said earlier that you were initially astonished when you heard that Gates was being nominated for AG, but then it made a certain sort of sense. And I'm wondering, I mean, what, how does it make sense to you? Like, what does it indicate about what Trump plans to do? Well, I think if you look at Trump's first term, I think he didn't expect to win. And I think he wasn't ready when he did win. And so what did he do when he came in, reached out and appointed a bunch of establishment officials?

uh figures to run his government so as attorney general you had jeff sessions he was the united states senator you had john radcliffe as director of national intelligence um you had jim mattis secretary of defense these were these were pros these these these are people that were competent and had demonstrated that they were but what happened was when trump ordered them to do some of the things that he wanted to do

They didn't do them. And they pushed back. And I think Trump learned from that experience. And he had four years to get ready, and now he's ready. And he's putting in to those really senior, really important jobs people are completely loyal to him. And Matt Gaetz fits that. Tulsi Gabbard, his appointee at National Intelligence, fits that.

Pete Heskiff, the Fox News commentator who's been chosen to run the Pentagon. These are primarily loyalists. It's not clear that they're going to be competent, but they will be loyal. So I think we can assume that they will do exactly what President Trump orders them to do.

So you described Gates as the ultimate Trump loyalist, and that's definitely true. Gates was one of Trump's most adamant supporters when he was contesting the results of the 2020 election. And he went so far as to claim that the January 6th rioters were not Trump supporters, but actually Antifa activists. And before that, in the days leading up to January 6th, Gates asked Trump for a blanket pardon covering all crimes that he had committed at any point up to the day of his request.

At the time, Gates was the subject of a broad investigation into allegations of sex trafficking. How should we look at Gates's legal trouble in light of him being, you know, picked for AG? It just seems like an inherent contradiction. Well, he's no longer in any legal trouble. I mean, first in Florida, there was a, you know, there was a federal investigation into trafficking, basically trafficking minor girl.

That he was not charged. It's not entirely clear why he wasn't charged, but there are women who have testified that he engaged in prostitution. There's an underage woman who, at least according to her attorney, told prosecutors that she had sex with Gates when she was a minor. So those are pretty substantial, but he didn't get charged with those. And when that investigation was closed, then the House Ethics Committee, which is empowered to

basically police their own. It's a committee made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats took up this investigation of him. And that apparently is a voluminous investigation. They've done a ton of work on it. I was told it was some 2,000 pages long that they've accumulated. And honestly, I thought this investigation would have been completed a long time ago. It hasn't been. And so when Gates was chosen to be

Attorney General, he resigned from Congress, thereby rendering that entire investigation into his behavior moot. And so what's going to happen to that? Well, my guess is like in due time, we are going to see that report. If the committee doesn't vote to release it, then I think in all likelihood, somebody's going to leak it if they haven't already. But

So how can we expect this to kind of like manifest if he's confirmed as AG? Just this general sense that like this is not Merrick Garland. This isn't even Jeff Sessions. This is a guy who like doesn't really seem to think that the law applies to him. And if it does, then it doesn't he doesn't really care. I think I think Matt Gaetz, since he was a young man.

since he was in college. He's gone through life believing that whatever happens to him, he's going to get out of and he's not going to have to be held accountable for. That's his MO. And it's been that way from the get-go. And so, like, the idea that he's Attorney General is, you know, it's kind of hilarious because, I mean, it's absurd because he's the chief, that he would be the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. And he has spent his entire life

certainly his entire adult life, getting out of things and avoiding accountability for the many, many times in which he either broke the law or crossed the line or came very close to the line. He's always gotten out of it. And so to have that person kind of in charge,

Yeah, it's kind of ironic to say the least. But this is what they want. I mean, this is what they want. They want to tear it down. And I think if I were a Republican senator, what I'd want to know, because, you know, they're going to be judged ultimately if they vote to confirm them. The Republican senators are going to be judged by Gates's behavior. I'd want to know, like, is there any line that you won't cross? Is there any law that you won't break?

Is there anything you won't do? Is there anything you want to build? You know, we know what you want to tear down, which is basically everything. What are you going to put in its place? And that's what I want. But if he were to be confirmed as Attorney General, what could we expect? And I think Gates has made pretty clear, I think, that

There's no guardrail that's going to hem him in. I mean, he's going to do whatever Trump wants him to do. He's been very clear about that. And he said, I remember he said to me when I spoke to him earlier this year in Texas, he said, my view of Washington is it's just so corrupt.

And so I think it's fair to say, I don't think he would disagree with this. He sees his job is to go to Washington and tear it down. He thinks it's a corrupt order. Everything about it is corrupt from the way that congressmen are elected to the way that they raise money and the way they govern themselves. And he wants to blow it up. And so I think Trump largely agrees with that. And so I don't think...

I mean, we're going to find out. But I think this is a person who believes that the kind of the established order that we've been operating under for many, many years in this country is corrupt and he wants to tear it down. We'll have more on Matt Gaetz and some of Trump's other cabinet picks after the break.

Hi, everybody. I'm Michael Kalori, Director of Consumer Tech and Culture at Wired. I'm Lauren Good. I'm a Senior Writer at Wired. And I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and Industry at Wired. We're here to tell you about our new podcast, Uncanny Valley. It's about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley.

Every week, we get together to talk about a story or a phenomenon bubbling up in Silicon Valley and how that thing is probably affecting you. We're super excited about the show, and we think you're going to love it. You can listen to Uncanny Valley wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now so you won't miss a beat. Basically, you just mentioned that it seems like Gates is going to do what Trump says and that he and Trump are kind of aligned in this

larger goal of blowing up Washington. But I'm also curious about Gates's personal ideology, because it seems like he's not your classic GOP politician. You know, like as a congressman, he worked to constrain government power. He pushed to loosen marijuana laws and to end warrantless surveillance. He also stood with progressives on environmental issues. And during Trump's first term, he helped end oil drilling off the coast of Florida. And

And so I'm wondering if we can I mean, do you think that he will just kind of fall in line with the broader party and kind of be a yes man for Trump? Or do you think that we can expect his kind of eclectic brand on some of these issues to to continue?

Well, I think that I asked him that question when I saw him as well. I said, like, how what is your kind of you know, what is your political philosophy? What do you believe? Yeah. What do you believe? And he said, well, he's very clear about it. He said, I mean, the thing you have to remember about Gates is he's very smart and he's very fast on his feet. And he's and I can imagine that as a litigator in a courtroom, you wouldn't want to go against him because he's like really quick and he's really smart. But I asked him that question. I said, what?

What's your political philosophy? And he said, I would describe it as a kind of populist-flavored libertarianism. And I think that's right. He's a populist. He's like, he's speaking directly to the working class primarily, but he's a libertarian. And so he is wary of government overreach. He doesn't want government involved in people's lives. And I think that's, you know, that's basically what he believes. I mean, look, I think when he becomes or if he becomes attorney general,

then, you know, kind of all bets are off. He's, it just depends on what his boss wants him to do or what the two of them kind of cook up together. And so, you know, people have been speculating all over the map about what are they going to do? And are they going to go after people? Are they going to try to punish? Is Trump going to try to use Gates to punish his enemies? Are they going to go after the press? Are they going to try to, you know, close down MSNBC? I, you know, I don't know. I mean, nobody knows right now. I'm not sure they know.

And then I want to ask you about the elephant in the room, which is

the question of whether he can even get confirmed. I mean, you alluded to this earlier that it's kind of an uphill battle given that other Republicans don't even seem to like him. But yeah, I mean, what do you think the chances are of him actually serving in this role, particularly if damning stuff from the report leaks? Even a decade ago, that would have been an easy call. He would not be confirmable. You know, the allegations and the evidence are that

You know, he was sleeping with prostitutes. And as a congressman, like, you know, slept with a girl, he wouldn't get confirmed. I mean, he wouldn't be nominated. But this is 2024, so... Sorry to jump in here, Dexter, but we're just going to note real quickly here that Matt Gaetz has denied all allegations of sexual misconduct. But please continue. Yeah, we don't know. I would say...

He's going to be confirmed, you know, he has to be confirmed by the Senate. Gates was in the House of Representatives. I was told by any number of people, he is, one congressman told me, he said, with the possible exception of Marjorie Taylor Greene, he is the most hated person in Congress by his colleagues, Republican and Democrat. They despise him. And remember what Gates did with a handful of Republican congressmen, just a handful, like,

off the top of my head, I can't remember, eight Republicans. He took down Mike McCarthy, the Speaker of the House. No one had ever done that before, ever. And he did it. And he did it basically against the overwhelming majority of his Republican colleagues. And so they hate him. They can't stand him. And I think the remarkable thing about Gates is that, you know, A, he was able to do that. I mean, he used basically

enlisted the democrats to help him do that but he was able to do that and he's able to get away with it and he's able to thrive that is the modern political system that we find ourselves in where um i think a number of people to me described him described gates as an arsonist you know he's gone to washington to burn it down

And he's been remarkably successful as a relatively junior congressman and as a pretty young guy still. He's been remarkably successful. And, you know, Harry Truman said a long time ago, any jackass can kick a barn down, but what are they going to build? And that's a good question to ask Gates. What do you want to build?

Maybe he'll get asked that in his confirmation hearings. Yeah, I look forward to that. So, Dexter, while I have you, I'm wondering if I can ask you about a couple other cabinet picks of Trump's. I'd like to talk about a different Florida politician who might join the cabinet, which is Mark Rubio, who is Trump's pick for secretary of state. Rubio has been a prominent foreign policy hawk for years. He has hardline views on Cuba, Venezuela and China.

I'm wondering what you expect from America's foreign policy if Rubio is confirmed. And it seems like his confirmation is a lot more likely than Gates's. Yeah, I think Rubio will be confirmed without any trouble at all. He was the first one announced and I was like, oh, this is going to be a normal cabinet. And then...

It kind of just got wilder from there. Yeah. Rubio is an establishment foreign policy figure and an internationalist, not until recently an America first or at all, and was kind of a hawk and an interventionist. And and so he's he's kind of, I think, possibly in anticipation of a Trump victory and a cabinet appointment.

he's trimmed his and changed some of his views, particularly on Ukraine. But I think in a nutshell, what Trump wants and has made pretty clear is China is the main enemy. China is the menace. Europe is a pain in the neck. They don't do enough to defend themselves. Ukraine, I don't care much about, but we're going to go after Ukraine.

We're certainly going to go after Iran, and we're going to give Israel a blank check in the Middle East. Those are going to be Rubio's marching orders. And so I think probably we'll get a fair amount of that, which is to say we'll get very hard line against China, probably tariffs. I think relations with China are probably likely to get worse. And I think we're probably going to see a pretty aggressive stance and an aggressive policy towards Iran. I think that they're going to restore...

the maximum pressure campaign that they had during the first Trump term, which I think honestly really brought the Iranian regime, if not to its knees, then something pretty close to that. And I think they felt like an opportunity was missed. And I think they're going to put the screws back on because I think they consider the Iranian regime to be vulnerable. So anyway, to get back to Rubio, I'd say, you know, Rubio will carry out

Trump's foreign policy. And I think Trump's foreign policy is, you know, China first as the main enemy and then and behind that, Iran. And then moving on to picks who have been a bit more controversial. I want to ask you about Pete Hegseth, who I think is maybe among the most inexperienced of the

picks who Trump has announced so far. So Hegseth is a former Fox & Friends host and an active duty veteran who Trump has tapped as Secretary of Defense. And if approved, he would be the least experienced defense secretary since the role was established. I don't think he's ever led a large organization, has never served in a government leadership role at all. I'm wondering what your read is on the Hegseth pick. Well, I mean, to me, I can—

understand what trump is doing he's i want my guy in there and i want somebody who's very loyal to me and will do what i tell him to do on the other hand um the pentagon is is a gigantic

institution. The armed forces have close to 3 million people in them. The Pentagon is the largest building and the largest bureaucracy in the world. It's enormous and it's filled with guys who are bursting with testosterone and who walk down the halls with their chests out. And I think they're not shrinking violets. And particularly if you're talking about a three-star general

And sitting across, I'm just imagining here, sitting across from Pete Hesgeth, who was a major in the Army Reserves or the National Guard, I don't know that they're going to listen to him. You know, it's a notoriously difficult situation.

bureaucracy to control the Pentagon, the generals, everyone else. I think somebody told me the other day, he said it's going to take him a couple of years just to find his desk. And so I think, what's that going to amount to? I don't know. But I think Hazgaff could be in for like a really hard time just trying to get his arms around it.

Yeah, I mean, I was going to ask you, like, you know, your thoughts on like how he might affect change within the military, given that he has, you know, for instance, he's written about, you know, the inclusion of women in combat roles and argued that DEI has eroded the military's values. And it kind of seems like Hegzeth and the Trump administration are prepared to wage like a culture war inside the Pentagon. But it also kind of seems like there's a chance that he spends the entire four years just kind of

It seems like it's going to be very hard for him to even navigate the place, let alone do things that are that drastic. Well, let me give you an example from Trump's first term. This is an amazing example. In 2017, Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, conducted a bunch of ballistic missile tests and, you know, kind of scared everybody. They've got, you know, they've got nuclear weapons. Trump ordered...

his then secretary of defense jim mattis mattis was called on the phone from the white house and they said president trump wants you immediately to evacuate all of the all of the

children and spouses of the 25,000 American troops who are in South Korea. Do it now. So we're talking tens of thousands of people evacuating South Korea overnight. Secretary Mattis just put the phone down and ignored Trump. He just ignored him. And it never happened. I mean, the dependents are still there. That was a direct order from the president. And I think...

That's what you're talking about, the Pentagon. Try to move it. I mean, it's like moving an aircraft carrier. And I'm not saying, obviously, that the generals are going to do what they want. I just think it's a hard place. It's a really hard place. And so you could imagine Hesgeth is going to come in and probably, I'm just guessing here, but probably they'll say, okay, all the DEI woke stuff, gone. Any amount of money that the Pentagon is spending on programs like that, throw them out the window.

And like that'll get done. And there'll be some things like that that are done and they'll be kind of very dramatic. But I think in terms of, you know, in terms of military policy and defense policy, it's not going to be as easy as it looks. It's not that easy in the Pentagon. It's just it's too vast and too big. And there's going to be a lot of resistance.

To finish off, I want to return to this idea of confirmations and how likely it is that these people will actually get a chance to serve in the cabinet. You know, I've seen people online saying that Trump is kind of taking a flood the zone approach to his cabinet where he's effectively daring the Senate to reject his picks. And then you see the theories about how he's going to recess appoint his cabinet so that they don't even have to go through the normal Senate confirmation process. And

I guess I'm just wondering whether you're sort of gearing up for these long confirmation battles or whether you think he has a workaround. And I guess whether you really are kind of looking to a future where we have Matt Gaetz as attorney general and Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense or whether you just think we're speculating on something that's just like totally unrealistic and can't really happen.

No, I don't think it's unrealistic at all. I think, you know, if I were a betting man, I'd say probably all these people will get through with the possible exception of Gates. Because Gates is such an outlier for so many reasons. But you asked, is there a workaround? Yeah. I mean, the workaround is the recess appointments, which is basically you just, you have the Senate and the House adjourn, and then you appoint, I mean, it's

Try to find that in the Constitution, but this is the idea that you adjourn Congress and then appoint the cabinet members that you want, and then Congress can come back, but they're already in place. I think that's the workaround. Particularly with somebody like Gates, it may be the only conceivable way that he could get into office.

And, you know, is it going to work? I don't know. I think the Supreme Court, I mean, this will be challenged immediately. It will go to the Supreme Court very quickly. And I think, you know, I think the Supreme Court has been pretty clear about this very issue, recess appointments. And, you know, my guess is it would probably be struck down, but that's a guess. I mean, I'm not a lawyer.

you know we'd have to see but but that is i mean trump's going to be determined to get them in and you know i think the other the other important thing to remember here is if you think back to his first term you know this republican senate is like pretty supine reliably supine they're gonna you know i think they're all inclined to give the president

the cabinet members that he wants. You know, he just got elected president. Trump can cause a lot of problems for all of them. So, you know, John Thune, the Senate majority leader, first, he initially said, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to let Trump do it this way. We're not going to do recess appointments. And he's already walked back from that. I mean, he said, like, everything's on the table. So we'll see. We'll see. Well, thank you so much, Dexter. I really appreciate your time.

After the break, New Yorker staff writer Claire Malone joins the show to talk about what is arguably the second most controversial cabinet pick, RFK Jr.,

Hi, I'm Nicholas Bleckman, The New Yorker's Creative Director. We've designed a collection of stylish and fun products for all seasons and ages, from beach towels and umbrellas to t-shirts and baby onesies. These and other items, including limited edition tote bags, are available only in The New Yorker store, carefully crafted and featuring work by the magazine's celebrated artists.

Visit store.newyorker.com and enjoy 15% off with the code NEWYORKERPOD at checkout. That's store.newyorker.com. Hey, Claire. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me.

So you have been following RFK Jr.'s foray into politics for a really long time now. He spent the last year campaigning as a third-party candidate for president. But before that, he was a prominent environmentalist and anti-vax activist. He's also just weird. Like, you were the reporter who broke the story that he'd picked up a dead bear cub in upstate New York before taking it to Central Park and leaving it there in an attempt to frame an errant cyclist.

So clearly RFK's path to politics... A fictional errant cyclist. Yeah, fictional errant cyclist. So clearly this has been an unconventional path to politics, a bizarre one even. And I'm wondering if you could just start off by giving us a quick history on how RFK Jr. found his way into the family business a little over a year ago. Yeah. To go all the way back...

Obviously, he's from the Kennedy family. And actually, when he was a very young man, his father died when he was 14. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated when Bobby Kennedy was 14 years old. But when he was a young man, even as he was struggling with heroin addiction, he was always seen by people in the family and I think close observers and friends as someone who had the talent to kind of take on life.

Yeah.

becoming an environmental activist in New York. After he got out of rehab, he started working for an organization that helped clean up the Hudson River. He became an environmental litigator. He ran an environmental law clinic. So he kind of became this figure of, I guess, like civic acceptance and someone who was viewed by a lot of liberals, Democrats, as like on the right side of the environmental struggle. Yeah.

Yeah, before we continue on, I just want to note to listeners that during the Obama years, there was actually speculation that RFK Jr. might be tapped to head up the EPA. Yes. So it's been, you know, that was a lot less controversial than this new appointment is. Less controversial, but interestingly, you know, he developed these, let's call them vaccine skeptical views starting in the really early 2000s. Oh, so he was already kind of there. He was already kind of there. So he, Bobby Kennedy, believes that

vaccines can possibly cause autism in children. That is a widely rebuffed idea.

He said a lot of he has a lot of sort of unorthodox and dangerous opinions about vaccination and other medical matters. He does not have a medical degree. He is a lawyer anyway. So he kind of got into I think like, you know, I don't think this will be unfamiliar to listeners that there is a certain sort of leftiness and anti-corporate skepticism that eventually kind of took him down this path of, you know,

Food safety, medicine safety, and it led into kind of a conspiratorial belief that the medical establishment and pharmaceutical establishment is part of essentially poisoning Americans. And that's something that really, I think, kind of calcified and accelerated after about like 2014 when he wrote a big book called Thimerosal, Let the Science Speak.

And he has since, in the past decade, become a really prolific writer of books.

in this general vein of vaccine skepticism. He's written books, you know, about Anthony Fauci. And he joined up with a, what was then a sort of small anti-vaccine or vaccine skeptical organization in Southern California. And he helped build it into something now called Children's Health Defense, which during the pandemic really became a nexus for anti-vaccine organizations.

And now we get to his more current political, what to call it, his entree into politics. So during COVID, his organization and his social media pages were, he would say, censored by social media for spreading disinformation that angered Bobby Kennedy himself.

And, you know, as he put it to me, and I think he's put it to others, it got him thinking about like where, well, how could they not censor me about my views? And he said, there's only one way if I run for president. And he was correct about that when he declared his candidacy, his social media pages were restored. So in a lot of ways, his entree into politics and its current status.

post-Trumpian era was because he felt he was being personally censored on his fringe vaccine beliefs. That's amazing. I mean, it's like you've described someone who is so left-wing and yet so right-wing. I mean, a lot of your piece is that. I mean, it's kind of hard to pin him down, basically. And what's interesting, I think, about his so left-wing it becomes right-wing thing, and I think this is common for a lot of

a lot of Americans who become skeptical of lots of institutions and lots of things. But like a lot of the things he talks about, you know, the chronic disease epidemic is one of his, was one of his favorite things to bring up on the campaign. That's real, right? Americans are

They have huge problems with heart disease. So like part of his Maha Make America Healthy Again platform is fixing chronic disease, right? Okay, I think most people can get on board with that. I think a lot of people are worried about what is in our foods. Are those things making us fat or leading to disease? I think a lot of people are worried about

plastic, microplastics in the water and pesticides. And, you know, there's some really mainstream science-backed stuff to say, like, yeah, there are problems with that. I'm worried about microplastics. I'll admit to it. Exactly, yeah. You know, I got rid of my Teflon pans in the last eight months. But I think where Kennedy kind of, and other people, and I think he's representative of a certain segment of the population, that worry is

goes over the edge into a belief that there is sort of a conspiracy to make us sick or to poison us, that it is, you know, you can be, I think, against, let's say, the influence of big pharma, but also say, like, vaccines help prevent infants from dying of measles or vaccines help us stay less sick from COVID-19. So I think that there is...

There's real truth in some of the stuff that he's talking about, but he kind of takes it to the nth degree. And I think that leads us to worries about him potentially leaving the Department of Health and Human Services. Yes, which I definitely want to get into sort of the potential repercussions of this decision. But first, I want to go back to the moment when RFK Jr. suspends his campaign and endorses Trump. What do we know at this point about those circumstances? Like,

At the time, was it kind of made clear to him or intimated to him that he would get a cabinet position? Like, was this the promise all along? Yeah. You know, I think for a long time, Bobby Kennedy had this sort of

vocational belief that he could be president. But I would say towards the end of the campaign, he started to get practical about what he could extract from his dropping out of the race. So after the attempt on Trump's life, Kennedy reached out to Trump. Obviously, he has a lot of family experience with political assassination. And he and Trump kind of started talking. They had direct conversations. Then Trump

Kennedy went to Milwaukee around the time of the RNC, met with Trump's team. And there were some, I think,

Not specific, like you're going to get HHS, but I think there was a lot of like dancing around Kennedy's team, sort of making it clear what they were interested in. His Kennedy's campaign manager and daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, told me sort of, you know, HHS was a, I think, you know, a position of real interest to them. But I think, you know, at various times people thought, well, maybe Trump will say like,

Kennedy can head some sort of vaccine commission. Maybe he'll have something more sort of specific and targeted. But I think Kennedy, you know, last week getting this nod from Trump that he was going to nominate him speaks to the aggressiveness with which he pursued Trump.

a position of real power. Like, I think Kennedy saw him having, you know, really thrown his life into upheaval. Running for president, no matter who you are, no matter how major a party you run for, it throws your life into a certain amount of upheaval because of travel and all that stuff. But, you know, he became, he really fell out with most of his

a lot of his family because they are obviously, you know, a democratic family. He fell out with, you know, he had, I think, a strained period with his wife. His wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, um,

had made it very clear from the beginning of his campaign that she was both, I think, uncomfortable with the idea of him running or being a political spouse. It wasn't a natural position for her. And also, I think she did not like Donald Trump. And so then you find Kennedy dropping out, endorsing Trump, cozying up to Trump. You know, they're now, you know, Cheryl Hines and RFK are in, you know, kind of camped out in Palm Beach doing what a lot of people were doing in the

Period from the election till now, which is like being in Trump's ear, being a presence. So I think it really speaks to his single mindedness about wanting to get in a position where he can really exert change as he sees fit.

It should be in America, in American health. Yeah. Can you just explain to the listeners like what it is that the Health and Human Services Secretary is responsible for and why this would be a more sought after position than, you know, head of the FDA or the DEA or one of the other kind of adjacent agencies that you could imagine RFK, maybe like they were second and third on the list? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, listen, I'm not a, I'm not a health reporter, but it's a, he has a wide remit. He can oversee vaccine distribution. And I think most importantly, the thing that has been in my mind the most, if he were to be confirmed, he would have this official platform to, um,

spread, if not overt misinformation, then, you know, this skepticism about vaccination from a official U.S. government perch.

That's so interesting because I was thinking about like, you know, I was going to ask you like how he might actually influence drug and food policies. But you're right that just being in this position where he can then spout off his views and people listen to him not only because he's like now allowed to say this stuff, but like because it's coming from, you know, the highest office in the land, essentially. That's really powerful. And he is a, you know, he's a presence, right? He's a person who lives.

you know, speaking extemporaneously comes naturally to, he likes being out there. He likes talking. He also would have the prerogative to fire and replace employees. And he's already sort of indicated that he, I think he said he wanted to fire something like 600 workers from one of the, from one of the departments under, under that HHS umbrella. So I think there's this idea that he could fire,

remake the workforce or try to remake the workforce and fill it with people who are vaccine skeptical. And I think you get a lot of public health officials or public health experts saying, well, that's that's a pretty, you know, terrifying kind of eating away at this pandemic.

you know, bureaucracy that I read one piece that just sort of said, you know, the public health infrastructure that the U.S. built up post-World War II is really astounding. I mean, you know, the elimination of polio, the elimination of a lot of these childhood diseases. I mean, I got chickenpox when I was little. Kids don't get chickenpox anymore. You know, so the idea of routine vaccination is really something that I think people in the health, in American public health, prided themselves on. And so, yeah,

Someone like RFK, who's so wildly skeptical of it, being put in charge of those people, I think kind of does strike fear into the hearts of people because, you know, infants are very susceptible to measles and all these things that we kind of, you go in and you give your kid, you know, within the first year of their life, a bunch of vaccinations. They might have a little reaction to it, right? But, you know, I think that's something that really...

can make an impression on people who are worried about their, earnestly worried about their children's health and want to do the right thing for their children. But if they're fed information that is incorrect, they could make a decision that is ultimately, you know, a tragedy of the commons effect for American kids. So I think that's the really sobering view on his potential influence. I'm curious whether you think that he might, um,

maintain some semblance of nuance on the sort of like vaccine question, just because it seems like he's sort of gone from these sort of wild claims, like saying that COVID was genetically engineered to exclude the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews, to then kind of softening his rhetoric a little bit and couching his beliefs behind phrases like medical freedom and informed consent. And so you could see a world maybe where it's just like this vaccine that for some reason he thinks is linked to autism becomes

optional or something like that. And so I guess I'm just curious whether you think he's going to be like an outright anti-vax hardliner or whether you've already seen signs of him realizing that now that he's in this position, he actually has to be a bit more nuanced. So he's always, he has always, I think, cannily framed himself as a vaccine skeptic or someone who sort of says, well, I just want people to have choices, you know. And I would guess that that would be the way that he would

frame it, right, while also potentially promoting, you know, these proven links. Because, you know, one thing that I was talking to someone during the course of reporting the piece and they said, you know, parents don't like, parents who have vaccinated their children don't like to be told by someone that they are giving their kid potentially a terrible disease, right? Like that's not a way to win people over to your cause. But what we do react to well is choice. It's your choice, right? My body, my choice. That's a decades-long...

you know, rallying cry for American health on the left, right? So the vaccine movement has sort of co-opted that. And I think savvily, right? You know, be able to choose for your kid. And you see it now with people being skeptical of fluoride, right? Fluoride in the water. I had a couple come up to me in the grocery store. I was with my kids and they asked me like,

I think my expertise was just having kids in a stroller, but they said, would you get this fluoride toothpaste? It was like a kid's fluoride toothpaste, and they seemed to be having a fight about it. So like, you know, the American struggle over like, should we have fluoride in our water, which again, was long seen as just like a default public health good. You're seeing a lot more skepticism thrown on that. And I think a lot of that also has to do with the

We talk about this a lot, but like the balkanized information environment, right? Health influencers on TikTok or Instagram can just like feed you up something that sounds like pretty scary in 30 seconds and say like...

Throw out all your plastic cups and you might be like, OK, yeah, maybe that's right. Or and then in the next video, they might say and don't and you should go to, you know, your public health meeting and lobby against fluoride in your drinking water. I just think that there's kind of like this new portal that's opened up in the American mind of like skepticism about everything that the government has sort of regulatory control over. And I absolutely think the Trump era might, you know, see an acceleration of that. Yeah.

So now that we've talked about all of the terrifying things that could happen, I'm wondering if we could also kind of go back to what you were saying earlier about RFK Jr. at the end of the day being lefty and...

The idea that he might sort of be a left-wing person who is entering this role that would then allow him to kind of push forward an ideology that is pretty counter to what we associate with MAGA. I mean, I'm thinking about, you know, he's a prominent environmentalist. And in theory, the Health and Human Services Secretary has some ability to institute policies around environmental health. He's pro-choice and HHS influences reproductive care. I think it was the National Review that called the

the selection of Kennedy to this role as a monumental disaster. I guess it all comes back to this question of like, do we think he will remain in lockstep with the administration because he's just so grateful to be there? Or do we think that there's a chance that he does some things that might, you know, please a lot of people on the left and might also piss off Trump?

My guess is that he'll probably hew pretty closely to what he sees as his biggest issue, which are vaccines. I mean, Kennedy and the question of abortion rights is an interesting one. His actual position about abortion was sort of

on the campaign. He kind of gave a lot of like mealy mouth, both sides of his mouth answers. I think he ultimately is pro-choice. But again, he's also a 70-year-old person who was raised Catholic. I don't think he's like particularly uncomfortable in the way that like Joe Biden is with sort of saying like, yeah, like, you know, being pro-life is a perfectly valid position and I'm going to kind of go and focus on my area of interest. But I think he's also

I don't see him, you know, this is again speculative right now, but like I don't see him really kind of staking out any adversarial ground against Trump, anything that would sort of jeopardize his pet issue. Again, this is a guy who has...

He alienated friends and family in pursuit of what he sees as kind of like, again, his vocational calling. Like he is the person who is going to solve what he sees as a problem in American life. I think he knows where his power derives. And I think based on the fact that he got this nomination, he must have some kind of sense of how to respond.

make it around Trump world, at least initially. You have to eat the McDonald's on Trump Force One. Glad you brought up that picture. I think it's just... He looked like he was in genuine pain. There is a picture, we were talking about a picture of Trump, Bobby Kennedy, I believe Speaker Mike Johnson, a couple other sort of Trump world people sitting on what I assume is, you know, Trump Force One, eating a big old plate of McDonald's, which

Kennedy has called poison. Although, you know, he's I think he's eaten fast food before. But it was a very it's funny because he's sort of making this pain face. And my immediate thought was there was this paparazzi shot of Mitt Romney and Donald Trump having dinner. Oh, John George, right? Yeah, John George. I think in 2016 or 17 in the transition period. And that was my immediate thought of like a person, Mitt Romney,

making a transactional sort of like business lunch and smiling through it. So, yeah, he's eating the McDonald's to get to solve the chronic disease crisis. Well, Claire, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. This has been The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett. This episode was produced by Sam Egan and edited by Gianna Palmer with mixing by Mike Kutchman.

Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of global audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Enjoy your week, and we'll see you next Wednesday.

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts. From PR.