In 2017, shortly before assuming the presidency, president-Elect Donald Trump asked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if he would be willing to investigate one of Trump’s top-of-mind concerns -- the safety of vaccines. Trump’s goal, to have Kennedy chair a “Vaccine Safety and Scientific Integrity Commission,” was soon sidetracked by the Russiagate accusation and then Covid.

But it was not forgotten.

In a recent leaked videotaped discussion between Trump and Kennedy, Trump reminded Kennedy about their 2017 discussion and urged him to take on the vaccine issue again. “I would love you to do so,” Trump urged. 

Trump’s preoccupation with vaccines -- coming the very day after the assasination attempt on his life and shortly before his formal acceptance as the Republican Party’s presidential  nominee -- demonstrates that the government bureaucracies overseeing the vaccine industry remain top-of-mind to him.  

“Something is wrong with that whole system,” he stated. “When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a10-pound or a 20-pound baby… do you ever see the size of it, its massive, then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I’ve seen it too many times.”

In an attempt to clinch the deal, Trump pointedly referred to Kennedy’s long commitment to reforming the CDC and the vaccine industry, highlighting the personal satisfaction such an accomplishment would bring, and its importance to Kennedy’s legacy. “And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you.”

In their recent discussion, Trump and Kennedy didn’t discuss the specifics of what a renewed investigation of the vaccine industry would look like, but their 2017 discussion -- an hour-long meeting held at Trump’s initiation that also included Kellyanne Conway and Mike Pence -- raised the same issues that continue to preoccupy him today.  

“He is troubled by questions of the links between certain vaccines and the epidemic of neurodevelopmental disorders including autism,” Kennedy told Science in a telephone interview at the time.  

“And he has a number -- he told me five -- friends, he talked about each one of them, who has the same story of a child, a perfectly healthy child who went into a wellness visit around age 2, got a battery of vaccines, spiked a fever, and then developed a suite of deficits in the 3 months following the vaccine.

“He said that he understood that anecdote was not science, but said that if there's enough anecdotal evidence… that we'd be arrogant to dismiss it.  Those were his words.”

In their recent discussion, Kennedy didn’t agree to take Trump up on his offer. No formal, detailed offer was even made, the call was merely the beginning of a process that Trump hoped would lead Kennedy to join the future Trump administration in a vaccine-related capacity. 

The call wasn’t even supposed to be made public -- Kennedy’s son, Bobby Kennedy III, leaked it on his own.  “When President Trump called me, I was taping with an in-house videographer.  I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted.  I apologize to the president,” Kennedy explained. 

Following the leak, Kennedy told the press that he was continuing with his candidacy for president.  Should his candidacy fail and Trump’s succeeds, as appears likely, look to negotiations between them to proceed for a vaccine-related role in Trump’s administration.

If Trump has a regret about his first term, it’s likely over his promotion of Covid vaccines -- a policy that his base overwhelming opposes, so much so that it drew boos at his rallies.  The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, with his decades-long record investigating vaccines and with his bestselling exposé of Fauci and the corruption of the public-health establishment, would loom large in Trump’s legacy as well as RFK Jr’s. 

Patricia Adams is an economist and executive director of Probe International.  Lawrence Solomon is an award-winning journalist and author of The Deniers, a #1 environmental bestseller.

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