Trump picks RFK Jr as health secretary
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 November 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Donald Trump is continuing to build a controversial administration, having picked vaccine sceptic and former independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr as his health secretary. Kennedy, commonly known by his initials RFK Jr, has a history of spreading health information that scientists say is false. We hear from a senior adviser to the Trump 2024 election campaign, as well as a former CDC director with serious concerns about the choice.
Also on the programme: the latest from the UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, as well as the remarkable discovery of a pre-historic ecosystem in the Italian Alps.
(Picture: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attends the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-A-Lago in Florida Credit: REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. |
| 0:05.1 | It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. |
| 0:08.6 | I'm Tim Franks. |
| 0:09.9 | In one very clear sense, Donald Trump is being true to his word. |
| 0:13.8 | He promised a clear win in the election, which he got, |
| 0:17.2 | and he promised to take on what he sees as the establishment in Washington, |
| 0:20.8 | the officials and the |
| 0:21.6 | agencies which so infuriated him during his first term in office. And so it has proved, at least in |
| 0:27.0 | terms of his wish list for his most senior executives. This time yesterday we were talking about |
| 0:32.0 | Mr. Trump's provocative picks for Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence. Today, |
| 0:37.2 | it's the man he wants to be his health secretary. |
| 0:39.7 | This was the President-elect making the announcement on Thursday in his first speech since election night. |
| 0:45.4 | Another one who's another great mind and a great guy and so popular, and I think he's right. |
| 0:51.0 | He wants to make people healthy. |
| 0:52.5 | It's driven him pretty wild over the last number of years. |
| 0:57.7 | The Democrats didn't treat him well. He was doing fantastically well. |
| 1:01.7 | And today I nominated him for, I guess, if you like health, |
| 1:06.0 | and if you like people that live a long time, it's the most important position. |
| 1:09.8 | RFK Jr. Bobby? |
| 1:13.3 | Robert Kennedy Jr. is a nephew of the former Democratic president, John F. Kennedy. He himself |
| 1:18.5 | had a long-shot campaign for the presidency this year, based in large part on his previous vociferous |
| 1:23.9 | championing of among other things, skepticism about vaccines and a cocktail of conspiracy theories. |
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