STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Former President Trump won election to another term after embracing one of his rivals, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The one-time Democratic candidate said he wanted a role in health and health care, and in October, Trump said he would get it. Let's listen.
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DONALD TRUMP: Robert F. Kennedy cares more about human beings and health and the environment than anybody, and he's going to be - having him is such a great honor. I've been friends of his for a long time, and I'm going to let him go wild on health. I'm going to let him go wild on the food. I'm going to let him go wild on medicines.
INSKEEP: Kennedy, himself, in the final days of the campaign spoke about fluoride and vaccines, among other things. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on the line now. Mr. Kennedy, welcome back to NPR. And I got to say congratulations to your side.
ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: Thank you very much. I'm happy to be back on the show.
INSKEEP: Now, I want to understand what you believe your role will be. For example, do you expect to be named to a Senate-confirmed position in the government?
KENNEDY: We have not yet decided exactly what that strategy is going to be, but that is a possibility. President Trump has given me three instructions. He wants the corruption and the conflicts out of the regulatory agencies. He wants to return the agencies to the gold standard empirically based, evidence-based science and medicine that they were once famous for. And he wants to end the chronic disease epidemic with measurable impacts on a diminishment of chronic disease within two years.
INSKEEP: OK, that's helpful. And now, you said the other day that on January 20, if I'm not mistaken, on the first day of the new administration, there would be a recommendation against putting fluoride in drinking water, which, we should note, is something that's been added for decades and appears to have massively improved dental hygiene. I realize you can find studies that say something else. Is this something that the administration is definitely going to do, recommend against fluoride?
KENNEDY: Yes. That's something that the administration will do. By the way, there was a court case on October 4 that was decided by a Obama-appointed judge against EPA because EPA has not done the health - the safety studies that it should have been doing. And one of the findings of that was that at this level, fluoride is almost certainly causing neurological development and loss of IQ in our children, as well as arthritis, bone breakage, thyroid problems, bone cancer and a number of other diseases. In the 1940s...
INSKEEP: I want to make sure - because the phone line isn't great, I want to make sure people understand. You said that there was a judge's ruling on October 4, which is correct, having to do with this topic, and there are questions about what levels of fluoride would cause harm as opposed to being beneficial. And I did hear you say that, yes, this is going forward on January 20, a recommendation to state and local authorities to stop putting fluoride in the water. Because our time is...
KENNEDY: You know, fluoride made sense in the 1940s when they put it in, but now we have fluoride in toothpaste. And countries like Austria and Germany that have removed fluoride from their water supplies have either the same or lower cavity issues than Americans. We don't need fluoride in our water, and it's a very bad way to deliver it because it's delivered it through the blood system.
INSKEEP: Understood. Understood the question. How quickly will you act on federal support for vaccines or research on vaccines?
KENNEDY: I will work immediately on that. That will be one of my priorities, to make sure that Americans - of course, we're not going to take vaccines away from anybody. We are going to make sure that Americans have good information right now. The science on vaccine safety particularly has huge deficits, and we're going to make sure those scientific studies are done and that people can make informed choices about their vaccinations and their children's vaccinations.
INSKEEP: Mr. Kennedy, I want to ask about one other thing while we've got you on the line. I'll just note you come from a very famous liberal family, to state the obvious. You are, or have been, a Democrat. And you're now joining an administration that appears to be dominated by a handful of billionaires - Elon Musk, John Paulson, Trump himself. How do you view what somebody might see as an extreme concentration of wealth and power that's coming here?
KENNEDY: Well, in fact, the Republican Party now only controls 30% of the wealth in our country. The Democratic Party controls 70%, and that is really a metamorphosis that took place because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump has made the Republican Party - in fact, Charlie Kirk said to me the other day, Donald Trump chased all the billionaires out of the Democrat - out of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is now the party of labor unions, the party of working people. It's the party of the American poor. And those are the people who voted for Donald Trump. Those are the people that he's going to keep those promises to.
INSKEEP: I think you are pointing out what exit polls do show, that people who are a little lower on the income scale, lots of them voted for Donald Trump. You are correct about that part. But I'm asking about the handful of people at the top, billionaires who have, by the way, business before the government, who will also be running the government. Are you concerned at all about that?
KENNEDY: I'm concerned about that in every administration, including the Biden administration. It was the billionaires who - the billionaire funders - you know, the Biden administration - the Biden team and the Harris team outraised the Trump campaign by 2-to-1. So if you want to worry about billionaires in government, you should've been asking that question for the last four years and not just start answering that now. This is something that I've been concerned about my whole life.
INSKEEP: Not to worry. We ask about it a lot of times. But, Robert F. Kennedy, it is a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you very much for your insights today, and I hope we talk with you again or have an opportunity to as the days go forward.
KENNEDY: Of course.
INSKEEP: Thanks very much.
And in our studio here - Studio 31 - is NPR's Pien Huang, who covers some of the issues that Mr. Kennedy mentioned. What did you hear there?
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Hey, Steve. So what I heard is that RFK Jr. has long been out there, bucking conventional public health expertise, and he reiterates that perspective just now. You know, he said that his role is not yet decided, but it is quite possible that he would have a very prominent role in the Trump administration.
And public health - you know, he talked about getting fluoride out of the water. That's something that he's talked about a lot. He also talked about...
INSKEEP: Is there a genuine debate about fluoride in the water?
HUANG: You know, there is not a debate over whether fluoride prevents cavities in the water. There have been, as he mentioned, questions about whether high amounts of fluoride might affect neurodevelopment in children, but it is not expected to really be at the levels that are recommended for fluoridation in the public water system.
INSKEEP: And needless to say, there's a big debate about vaccines, which we will surely be able to have in future days. Pien Huang, thanks so much for your insights. Really appreciate it.
HUANG: You're welcome, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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