Former CDC Director Endorses Trump, Supports RFK Jr.’s Health Initiatives

Dr. Robert Redfield, then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies during a hearing on Capitol Hill, on July 2, 2020. Saul Loeb/Pool/Getty Images

Dr. Robert Redfield, who served as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is supporting former President Donald Trump and his new ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plan to “Make America Healthy Again.”

The endorsement from Redfield, whom Kennedy had criticized for years, appears in a Sept. 24 editorial he wrote for Newsweek magazine under the headline, “Donald Trump Has a Plan to Make America’s Children Healthy Again. It’s a Good One.”

Referring to the pair, Redfield wrote: “I support their noble effort to heal our children.”

Redfield pointed out that, before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, the “Trump Administration set a course to address chronic disease, funding earlier interventions to curb the growing crisis.”

“Five years later, this issue is exactly where it needs to be: at the center of the presidential debate, now in a unique partnership,” he said, referring to Trump’s alliance with Kennedy.

“To heal our children, a president must see the possible and lead our nation to act,” Redfield wrote. “After more than 40 years in the public health arena, it might surprise some of my colleagues to know I think President Trump chose the right man for the job: Robert Kennedy, Jr.”

In late August, Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump made waves because of his family’s longtime prominence in the Democratic Party. His father was Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and his uncle was President John F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated while in office in the 1960s.

Kennedy and Trump, despite some political differences, share mutual concern over Americans’ health.

Redfield said Kennedy is correct in his assessment that all three major U.S. health agencies are subject to outside influence, including the CDC, which he formerly headed.

Much of the FDA’s budget comes from pharmaceutical companies, Redfield said, adding that the National Institutes of Health “is cozy with biomedical and pharmaceutical companies,” and its scientists “are allowed to collect royalties on drugs” that the agency licenses to pharma.

Kennedy, a former longtime Democrat and independent presidential candidate who recently suspended his 2024 campaign and endorsed Trump, described Redfield’s support as an “extraordinary event” in a video posted on the social media platform X.

“This is the guy who’s the head of the CDC that I’ve been criticizing for years, and then this afternoon he came over and had lunch with me,” Kennedy said in the Sept. 24 video. "It was the first time I’ve ever met him, and the first thing he said to me is, ‘you got everything right.’”

‘A Sick Nation’

The U.S. Department of Agriculture “is a captive of industry, too,” Redfield wrote.

Rather than focusing on its mission of ensuring a healthy food supply, “the agency often favors large corporations over the interests of small farmers and the public’s health,” Redfield said.

Chronic disease accounts for more than 75 percent of the nation’s $4 trillion annual health care expenses, Redfield said, an indicator of an unfortunate reality: “We have become a sick nation.”

This can be changed, he said. He gave a nod to the Trump–Kennedy Make America Healthy Again initiative, saying, “It’s time to make America healthy again.”

Heading off America’s health problems can start with children, Redfield said, noting that chronic health conditions afflict 40 percent of school-aged children; 20 percent of children are obese, a five-fold increase since the 1960s.

Agricultural use of pesticides is proven to be a risk factor for attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorders, he said.

Trump has promised that, if he wins the Nov. 5 election against Vice President Kamala Harris, he will appoint experts to work with Kennedy to investigate the causes of the decades-long deterioration of Americans’ health.

Harris’s health care plans center largely on lowering prescription drug costs, expanding the Affordable Care Act, and canceling medical debt for millions of Americans, according to her campaign website. Harris has also vowed to sign congressional legislation to legalize abortion nationwide.

The Epoch Times has sought comment from the federal agencies Redfield named in his article, but did not receive immediate responses from the CDC, the FDA, NIH, or the Department of Agriculture.