Why Democrats Think This Is the Way to Attack Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The prospect of RFK Jr. in a Trump administration has Democrats on edge, but they’re keeping their focus on his squishy positions on abortion.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Evan Vucci/AP

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. swears he’ll have a prominent role in a new Trump administration, as he stumps around the country promising to end the “FDA’s war on public health” with sweeping policy changes. But Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are trying to keep attacks on him simple — sidestepping his claims about the dangers of vaccines or pledges to remake the U.S. agriculture system in favor of a tight focus on abortion policy.

“Putting an anti-abortion conspiracy theorist in charge of our public health agencies says everything you need to know about how Donald Trump would govern,” Harris wrote on X on Wednesday.

Harris’ message came in response to a video of Kennedy saying that Trump “promised” him “control of the public health agencies,” including “HHS and its subagencies, CDC, FDA, NIH and a few others, and then also the USDA.”