Dan Mitchinson: US correspondent on Robert F Kennedy Jr's nomination to be Secretary of Health

Donald Trump has tapped vaccine-sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr to be US Secretary of Health.  

The nomination has prompted widespread criticisms, though Trump says Kennedy “will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”  

US correspondent Dan Mitchinson tells Heather du Plessis-Allan Kennedy’s signature cause is to fight chronic disease, but he is also urging the removal of fluoride from water. 

Meanwhile, X (formerly Twitter) has seen its largest user exodus since Elon Musk took over. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
International correspondence with Ends and Eye Insurance, Peace of Mind
for New Zealand Business. Jan Mchison, US correspondence with US.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hello, Dan, did you know Tom Cruise just brought the
rights to that story? By the way, what to make
a movie out of it? Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Are you taking the mickey?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I am?

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I was like, how is you?

Speaker 3 (00:21):
I don't know, jeez, you're a dad, aren't you? Because
immediately I started thinking, okay, like is it really that interesting?
And how are we going to who are we going
to cast as the lead monkey?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
And anyway, I don't know. It is one of those
stories that just won't die over here anyway.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
It's not say, hey, what do you make of Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Kind Of an interesting choice, isn't it, especially when he's
such a big vaccine skeptic to lead the Department of
Human Health Services. I mean, this is a guy that
is going to be in charge with the you know,
the health experts right here and administering all this health
insurance and approving drugs and medical supplies here. And you know,
I mean he he had said, Okay, I'm not going
to run for president. He dropped out back in August
which we knew he didn't really stand a chance back then,

(00:59):
but he wanted to win a spot in the Trump administration,
and he said, you know what, pledging to fight chronic
disease is going to be his signature cause right here.
But I think you've got a lot of people that
are already saying, oh, this is not going to go
over too well with a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Okay, So his view, what is the most egregious thing
that he has said about vaccines?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
He just he's just anti vacs. He just doesn't believe
in it. For for for COVID. He he feels it
a lot of the federal agencies over here having done
enough research on the shots that hundreds of millions of
us have received for whether it's flu, which you know,
I mean, I.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Mean, I mean it's obviously, you know, slightly problematic to
be in that position with that view, But that's cool
that that's his view.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
What's he has he articulated what he plans to do.
Is he planning to ban the COVID vaccine? What's up?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
I don't know if he's going to be able to
do anything like that. What he wants to do is
though he says that he has studied the response for
a lot of these things. He has a better idea
for it. He feels that the the the Health Administration
is too powerful at this but he's going to have
to go through all kinds of his nomination, is going
to have to go through this Senate Finance Committee. And
I mean, so's he's still got an uphill battle on this.
So we'll have to wait and hear what he has

(02:06):
to say.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
And then is he seriously wanting to take floride out
of the water.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
That's what he says. Yeah, that's what he says. And
that's an interesting thing because every couple of years that
pops up over here, and you've got states right here
that want it out and that don't have it. You
have other states that say, no, we need it in
here because kids need it, you know, to to prevent
cavities and so forth. And then you have the conspiracy
theorists that say the governments just poisoning us with the
floor in the water.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
M Okay, we'll see how this one goes.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Just actually, one follow up question on that, so Gates
met Gates may actually not happen because in the attorney
general position, because he is so controversial.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Is the same true of Kennedy.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
I think Kennedy's more likely to make it through the
gates is at this point in time. But I mean,
anything can happen, especially, but it's going to be it's
hard to imagine that with the Republicans basically controlling everything
right here for him not to get through.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Okay, So what's going on with X and all the
people leaving? Why are they leaving all of a sudden?
The place is it's been a well think for ages.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
You know it has, and you know the media is
making a lot of this that everybody's flooding to apps
like blue Sky and Instagram's threads, and you've got people
like The Guardian that just said, hey, we're not going
to be using X anymore, and and social influencers like
Don Lemon, who used to be a CNN said we're
not going to be on here. And they've had about
a million people that have left in the past week

(03:22):
to join other platforms. But what's interesting too, and X,
by the way, is not giving us numbers how many
people have left the platform, but starting tomorrow, when you
sign on to X, which is actually today down where
you are, you're going to be agreed to let them
use whatever you post to help feed artificial intelligence AI,

(03:43):
so they can they can take video, they can take
what you're saying, they can take pictures, and that is
going to be used for whatever purpose they want to do.
You may find your image being used somewhere on this
platform as well. And that's what got a lot of
people saying, wait a minute. If that's the case, not
that they're not already doing that, that they're just not
interested in.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Well, exactly I was going to say, isn't that what
shouldn't we be assuming that absolutely everybody's doing that anyway?
You should be assuming that that meta on Facebook and
Instagram is doing it and everybody else.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Right, absolutely, Yeah, whatever you put out there, it's not
going anywhere. It's going to be out there.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
For If you're getting it for free, it ain't free.
They're taking something off you. Hey, Dan, thank you, appreciate it,
and enjoy your weekend. Dan Mitchison, US correspondent.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
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