Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, vaccine-denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had harsh words for the president-elect and his supporters following his 2016 win.
In a December 2016 episode of his “Ring of Fire” radio show, unearthed by CNN’s KFile, Kennedy blasted Trump’s voters as “belligerent idiots” allied with “spineless fellow travelers.” The now-thought leader of the Make America Healthy Again platform also said that “outright Nazis” inside Trump’s orbit were advanced by the “cowards” and “bootlickers” within his camp.
Kennedy went on to compare Trump to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, concluding that the Republican was in some ways worse.
“[At least] Hitler was interested in policy,” Kennedy said.
The former independent presidential candidate joined the Trump team in August, abandoning his promise earlier that month that he was not open to joining Trump’s cabinet and drawing cheers from the very same crowd he once called “idiots,” “opportunists” and “fleshy dominoes.”
On the radio in 2016, Kennedy attacked Trump’s populist playbook, comparing him to European dictators like Francisco Franco and Benito Mussolini, as well as American white supremacists George Wallace and Father Charles Coughlin.
“You can see that every statement that Donald Trump makes is fear-based … trust in me, vote for me and everything will be great again. And of course, that whole thing is like a carnival barker,” Kennedy said..
In a statement to CNN, Kennedy explained his flip-flop by demonizing the press, expressing gratitude for working with Trump today.
“I allowed myself to believe the mainstream media’s distorted, dystopian portrait of President Trump. I no longer hold this belief and now regret having made those statements,” Kennedy said.
Assuming Trump doesn’t axe his nomination, Kennedy wouldn’t be the lone voice to have likened Trump to Hitler in the West Wing. Vice President-elect JD Vance once called the then-candidate “America’s Hitler” years before joining him on the GOP ticket.
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