“For 20 years, I’ve gotten up every morning on my knees and prayed that God would put me in a position where I can end the childhood chronic disease epidemic in this country,” Robert Kennedy Jr. said in remarks Thursday at the White House — having just been confirmed as secretary of health in the White House.
Kennedy went on to describe his surprising partnership with then-candidate Donald Trump as an answer to his prayers.
“A healthy person has 1,000 dreams. A sick person only has one,” Kennedy continued, describing what he called a “breathtaking epidemic” of chronic illness “that is disabling our people.”
Kennedy said “60% of our population has only one dream — that they get better.”
“We can’t be a strong nation if we have a weak citizenry, if people are sick,” he said, citing other statistics that “77% of our children cannot qualify for military service.”
Calling for ‘spiritual realignment’
“We’re not just in a health crisis, but we’re in a spiritual crisis. And those things are connected,” Kennedy said on Fox’s Laura Ingraham’s show later on Thursday. Referencing his travels across the country over recent years, he said he senses that people, especially younger people, are “feeling disconnected.”
“We have a whole generation of kids that feel alienated, dispossessed. They are in a existential crisis,” and not only because of their health.
“There’s a purposelessness in their lives and no sense of usefulness or effectiveness or connectedness to their communities.”
Kennedy argued that this deeper spiritual alienation is what ”drives also the chronic disease epidemic, and the epidemics we’re seeing of depression, of suicide, of alcoholism, of drug addiction.“
Those things have to be addressed at the same time, he said. “We can’t just say we’re going to make you physically healthy.”
Referencing his and others’ experience overcoming past addiction (he talks of still attending 12-step meetings regularly), Kennedy said, “The only way to overcome that biological impulse is with a spiritual realignment, a spiritual fire.” This is something, he said, that “comes from connectedness to community.”
For addicts who have become isolated and withdrawn from other relationships, he said the “process of getting over this is a process of reconnecting with the community.”
“We need to get up in the morning and not think about, ‘What am I going to do to make myself happy today?’ We have to get up and say, ‘What am I going to do to make myself useful today, to be useful to my friends, to my family, to my community.‘”
The connectedness that comes from doing good things, from being of service to others, is ultimately the path to happiness, he said.
Debating Kennedy’s qualifications
There has been great debate across the country in recent weeks about the potential of Kennedy’s new influence on the country’s health. Earlier on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Kennedy on the Senate floor before the final vote. In the past, he said, “HHS Secretaries have had a pharmaceutical industry background, have been a state health commissioner, have run health systems, have been governors, somebody who has had a background in actually administering the programs that HHS administers.”
“Which of these qualifications does RFK possess?”
Kennedy responded to Schumer’s comment on Ingraham’s show, saying that these were the “very qualifications that got us to where we are today.” He noted that although having “4.2% of the world’s population,” the United States buys “70% of the pharmaceutical drugs on earth.”
“We spend two to three times what other countries pay for health care, and we have worse health outcomes. We literally have the sickest population in the world.”
Kennedy argued for a different approach: “I’m not going to let the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry run health policy anymore.”
Message to those fearing his influence
Kennedy was also asked at the press conference how he would address concerns that some Americans may have about his stance on vaccines.
People are reassured when they “actually hear what I think about vaccines,” he said — adding that a “common sense” approach is that “vaccines should be tested, they should be safe, everybody should have informed consent.”
“People are reacting because they hear things about me that aren’t true. They hear characterizations of things that I said that are simply not true.” He suggested that when people hear what he has to say, they feel more supportive.
As a final question at the press conference, Kennedy was asked about his message to Democrats that fought so hard against his nomination.
Referencing something President Trump had shared with him, Kennedy said “there’s no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. All of our children need to be protected.”
“And whether you’re in a blue state or red state, I’m going to do everything I can to work with you, whether you’re Democrat or Republican, to restore child’s health in this country.”