DeSantis backtracks on appointing RFK Jr. to lead public health agency

Just two days after saying that if elected president he’d consider appointing conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead a federal public health agency, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis walked those comments back on Friday.

The Republican presidential candidate on Wednesday told OutKick’s Clay Travis that Kennedy’s views on COVID protocols and vaccines would fit his vision in forming in a new administration, and suggested selecting Kennedy to lead the CDC or FDA after Travis asked him if he’d consider the longshot Democratic presidential candidate as a running mate.

“If you’re president, sic him on the FDA if he’d be willing to serve. Or sic him on CDC,” DeSantis said.

“In terms of being veep, if there’s 70 percent of the issues that he may be averse to our base on, that just creates an issue.”

But DeSantis on Friday in an interview with Newsmax said that his comments were taken out of context and that a Kennedy appointment is now off the table.

“Well that’s actually not what I said about heading those agencies, we’re going to have a medical doctor and we’ll have a PhD at those agencies but I've also promised to bring a reckoning to all the medical bureaucracy for how they handled COVID,” DeSantis said.

“And so someone like RFK Jr., he's been right on Fauci and has identified the problems with the COVID lockdown. So I want to have a taskforce that's got bipartisan support, that can go in hold these people accountable, because this can never happen to our country again, what they did by closing schools, closing businesses doing all that, that laid waste to communities across this country. They have never been held accountable, so we need accountability."

“So that was the issue that I said I consider.”

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