The incoming Trump administration’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has a history of scathing criticisms against the president-elect, including comparing him to Hitler and branding his supporters “belligerent idiots” and “outright Nazis.”
The remarks, many of which were made on Kennedy’s “Ring of Fire” radio show in 2016, were uncovered by CNN.
They mark the latest issue surrounding the Trump transition process, after Attorney General pick Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration, amid allegations of past sexual misconduct.
During one broadcast, Kennedy read approvingly from an article that claimed the Trump coalition was made of a group of genuine Nazis bouyed by “a much larger group of opportunists and spineless fellow travelers whose primary function is to turn a blind eye to things.”
“And, you know, he’s not like Hitler,” Kennedy added, arguing, “Hitler had like a plan, you know, Hitler was interested in policy ... I don’t think Trump has any of that. He’s like non compos mentis. He’ll get in there and who knows what will happen.”
Elsewhere, Kennedy claimed that Trump was exploiting fear to gain political power during a time of national anxiety, comparing the Republican to dictators like Hitler and Mussolini, as well as Father Coughlin, a pro-Nazi U.S. radio host from the 1930s who commanded a large following.
“And you can see that every statement that Donald Trump makes is fear-based,” Kennedy said in December of 2016, according to the report. “Every statement he makes. You know, we have to be fear of the Muslims. We have to be fear of the Black people, and particularly the big Black guy Obama, who’s destroying this country, who’s making everybody miserable.”
In other comments, Kennedy, a longtime environmental lawyer, claimed Trump’s EPA leader was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and accused Trump of pursuing a “pollution-based prosperity” that took aim at landmark environmental laws and climate accords like the Paris Agreement.
“Like many Americans, I allowed myself to believe the mainstream media’s distorted, dystopian portrait of President Trump,” Kennedy said in a statement. “I no longer hold this belief and now regret having made those statements.”
Kennedy isn’t the only member of the Trump inner circle who previously criticized the president-elect.
JD Vance, prior to being chosen as Trump’s vice-president, called his fellow Republican a “cynical a**hole,” a “moral disaster,” a “total fraud,” an “idiot,” and suggested he might be “America’s Hitler.”
Vance later explained that he was “wrong about the guy” and said he voted for Trump in 2020.
“I was certainly skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016, but President Trump was a great president, and he changed my mind,” Vance said in July, explaining the shift. “I bought into the media’s lies and distortions.”
In private messages in early 2020, Vance reportedly still thought Trump “thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism,” according to The Washington Post.
Former Florida senator Marco Rubio, whom Trump has chosen to nominate for Secretary of State, also has a history of making barbed comments about Trump.
He frequently branded his 2016 GOP rival an untrustworthy “con man” during the presidential primary campaign that year.
