The panelists on “Fox & Friends” defended Health and Human Services (HHS) nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. against his family members’ personal attacks against him ahead of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.
Kennedy’s cousin, Caroline Kennedy, issued a scathing letter to key senators Thursday calling him a “predator” who is unfit to serve as the next HHS secretary, while other members of his family publicly condemned his presidential run and his later endorsement of President Donald Trump. Kennedy has been an outspoken critic of the current Democratic Party, additives in highly processed American foods and has been a skeptic of some vaccines, though he has assured the public he is not “anti-vaccine.”
The “Fox & Friends” co-hosts pointed out Kennedy’s determination to improve Americans’ health, including making diets healthier and reducing the obesity rate.
“[Kennedy] wants to take [processed foods] away, make it more organic, more like the foods in Europe,” co-host Ainsley Earhardt said. “That says a lot when Europe doesn’t want our meats, when Europe doesn’t want to import our fruits and our vegetables. And think about all the people that you know in their 20s and 30s getting cancer. Someone I know told me that a girl who was like 31 years old just died of breast cancer. That shouldn’t be happening. That didn’t happen when we were growing up. Kids are obese, adults are obese, and he’s going to make Americans healthy again, what’s wrong with that?”
“I think it’s the hottest topic for most Americans when they’re not talking about who they’re voting for, everyone’s talking about the food,” co-host Brian Kilmeade added. “It’s universal. For the longest time we heard Americans don’t get active enough, and now it turns out we are active, maybe it’s what we’re eating isn’t possible to burn off. And for Caroline Kennedy to make such a scathing series of statements, it couldn’t be worse. And she’s got this iconic status. And she even brought up the fact that he’s using his father’s name in a detrimental way, that he groveled to get the job. This job with Trump, he did not grovel. The Trump campaign reached out to him because they saw he was getting a lot of youth votes and a lot of their messages overlapped.”
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In her letter, Caroline Kennedy accused her cousin of leading other members of their family “down the path of drug addiction” and of “hypocritically” vaccinating his own children while telling other families to stay away from vaccinations.
“Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs,” Caroline said.
Kilmeade further said that Kennedy has faced scrutiny for challenging studies disputing the idea that vaccinations can lead to autism. Kennedy told NBC News in November that he will not “take away anybody’s vaccines,” but wants to ensure that Americans have the individual choice to decide whether the product is right for them.
Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in December that Kennedy will investigate any links between childhood vaccines and autism.
Kennedy has criticized several food additives placed in American foods that are currently banned in Europe, such as potassium bromate, Titanium dioxide and Brominated vegetable oil (BVO), CBS News reported. Major processed food corporations witnessed their stocks significantly drop after Trump tapped Kennedy to lead HHS in mid-November, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned Red No. 3, a common artificial food dye linked to cancer, ahead of Kennedy’s upcoming hearing.
Co-host Steve Doocy argued that most Americans agree with Kennedy on the need for healthier and organic foods.
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