Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Shares The MOST SURPRISING Insight He’s Learned About President Trump

Tucker Carlson:
Well, here’s a story you probably haven’t heard a lot about. The Chinese mafia is exploiting rural America to create a drug empire. This is not available on cable news. The networks not telling you about this, but it’s totally real. Communist-affiliated drug gangs destroying parts of the United States, the parts that Washington ignores, to sell drugs, laundering money, and building a black market network inside this country’s most beautiful but least served areas.

We’ve got a brand new documentary on this. It’s called High Crimes: The Chinese Mafia Takeover of Rural America. It’s available now on tuckercarlson.com. It’s excellent. The purchase of churches and schools to aid the operation, the jerryrigging of power boxes to steal electricity, foreign pesticides, collusion with the Mexican cartels. It’s unbelievable. By the way, one of the drug houses is like walking distance from my house. I didn’t know that.

It’s a layered and fascinating story. Head to tuckercarlson.com to watch now. We think you’ll love it.

Tucker Carlson:
Mr. Secretary, thank you. Thank you for doing this. I remember the night that Trump won, talking to people in Washington, and their doomsday scenario, the thing that they feared more than North Korea getting the bomb was you becoming Secretary of Health and Human Services. They really were afraid because they felt it was a threat not just to them but to the whole business of the city.

And I think a lot, I mean there’s a reason they felt that way and they probably still do. So what’s that been like? What’s the opposition been like? The organized opposition to your program?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Well, you know, the irony is I’m not really getting opposition directly from the industry. Most of the industry wants things from this department. And we want American industry to profit, the pharmaceutical companies, everything else. And I think they know that and they know that we’re working with them, or not. They also know they’ve been getting away with stuff up till now and that era is over.

I get opposition from proxies to the industry. Yes. And I think the major opposition that I feel is from the mainstream media and from Democrats, which is really… that is an interesting phenomenon because these were people I was friends with my whole life. And you know, I have not changed and my values have not changed and the policies that I’ve been advocating have not changed.

But the party has just a knee-jerk reaction against anything that is Trump. And you know that President Trump is in this kind of really paradoxical position where he not only has completely taken over the Republican party and dictates its platform, but he’s also dictating the platform for the Democratic party. I’ve noticed. Oh, if you know, I remember I saw this for the first time on NAFTA. Democrats traditionally were against NAFTA. And as soon as President Trump came out against NAFTA, all the Democrats were now for NAFTA.

The Democrats were the anti-war party, but as soon as he expressed his opposition to the Ukraine war, they became the war party. The Democrats traditionally were the biggest critics of the CIA and the intelligence agencies. And as soon as President Trump started complaining about the power of the intelligence agencies in Washington, they became bonded with the intelligence agencies to the extent where they had for the first time in history a former CIA director speaking at their convention.

I immediately before Kamala Harris. They were the party of free speech and they became, you know, when President Trump started advocating for free speech and his ability to talk, you know, the shutdowns of him on Twitter and these other really crazy efforts to suppress the speech of a former president. He became a major advocate of free speech and the Democrats are now openly for censorship.

The Democratic Party was the party of women’s sports. My uncle wrote Title IX, making sure that women had the right to and had the equal access to the resources that they could play sports. And the Democratic Party has become the party that is now the enemy of women’s sports. And you can go on and on with those examples, but President Trump is literally dictating the platform of the Democratic Party. Anything that he says they’re going to be against.

And you know, that is also a departure from tradition. My father was very critical of partisanship. I remember him telling us when we were kids, “I don’t vote for the Democrat or Republican. I vote for the person, whoever is supposed best in the job.” And that partisanship by its nature is dishonest and it is the enemy of democracy. In Washington’s farewell speech, he said that. He said he was very frightened about the rise of the political party because they would become self-interested rather than patriotic.

They would become interested in promoting their own agendas rather than the agenda of the country. And he thought that that was a real threat to American democracy and to this great experiment that we have in hypocrisy.

Tucker Carlson:
Well, here’s a story you probably haven’t heard a lot about. The Chinese mafia is exploiting rural America to create a drug empire. This is not available on cable news. The networks not telling you about this, but it’s totally real. Communist-affiliated drug gangs destroying parts of the United States, the parts that Washington ignores, to sell drugs, launder money, and build a black market network inside this country’s most beautiful but least served areas.

We’ve got a brand new documentary on this. It’s called High Crimes: The Chinese Mafia Takeover of Rural America. It’s a layered and fascinating story. One of the drug houses is like walking distance from my house. I didn’t know that.

Tucker Carlson:
Mr. Secretary, thank you. Thank you for doing this. I remember the night that Trump won, talking to people in Washington, and their doomsday scenario, the thing that they feared more than North Korea getting the bomb was you becoming Secretary of Health and Human Services. They really were afraid because they felt it was a threat not just to them but to the whole business of the city.

And I think there’s a reason they felt that way and they probably still do. So what’s that been like? What’s the opposition been like—the organized opposition to your program?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Well, you know, the irony is I’m not really getting opposition directly from the industry. Most of the industry wants things from this department, and we want American industry to profit—the pharmaceutical companies and everything else. I think they know that and they know that we’re working with them, or not. They also know they’ve been getting away with stuff up till now and that era is over.

I get opposition from proxies to the industry. I think the major opposition that I feel is from the mainstream media and from Democrats, which is really interesting because these were people I was friends with my whole life. I have not changed and my values have not changed, and the policies that I’ve been advocating have not changed. But the party has a knee-jerk reaction against anything that is Trump.

President Trump is in this paradoxical position where he not only has completely taken over the Republican Party and dictates its platform, but he’s also dictating the platform for the Democratic Party. I saw this first on NAFTA. Democrats traditionally were against NAFTA, and as soon as President Trump came out against NAFTA, all the Democrats were now for NAFTA.

The Democrats were the anti-war party, but as soon as he expressed his opposition to the Ukraine war, they became the war party. The Democrats traditionally were the biggest critics of the CIA and the intelligence agencies, and as soon as President Trump started complaining about the power of the intelligence agencies in Washington, they became bonded with the intelligence agencies to the extent where they had, for the first time in history, a former CIA director speaking at their convention.

They were the party of free speech, and when President Trump started advocating for free speech and his ability to talk, the shutdowns of him on Twitter and these other really crazy efforts to suppress the speech of a former president made him a major advocate of free speech, and the Democrats are now openly for censorship. The Democratic Party was the party of women’s sports—my uncle wrote Title IX—ensuring women had equal access to resources to play sports. The Democratic Party has become the party that is now the enemy of women’s sports.

You can go on and on with those examples, but President Trump is literally dictating the platform of the Democratic Party. Anything that he says, they’re going to be against. That is also a departure from tradition. My father was very critical of partisanship. He told us when we were kids, “I don’t vote for the Democrat or Republican, I vote for the person—whoever is best for the job.”

Partisanship by its nature is dishonest and it is the enemy of democracy. In Washington’s farewell speech he said he was very frightened about the rise of the political party because they would become self-interested rather than patriotic. They would become interested in promoting their own agendas rather than the agenda of the country, and he thought that was a real threat to American democracy and to this great experiment.

Tucker Carlson:
I remember your first break with the Democratic Party and with personal friends—even members of your family—was a Rolling Stone piece that you wrote about autism, asking why autism rates have risen. You were written out of polite society for doing that. One of the first things you did as secretary, I think, was commission a study of autism. Can you tell us what that is? What are you seeking to do with that?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Yeah. The studies that CDC has generated on autism were all epidemiological studies, and they all say what the CDC wanted them to say—they couldn’t find a link. The problem is that the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, said in 2001 that the link between autism and vaccines is biologically plausible.

They were highly critical of the way CDC was making decisions about the vaccine schedule; that ASIP, an external-internal panel responsible for deciding which new vaccines will be added to the schedule, had been captured by industry. The people who serve on that panel—almost all of them—have financial entanglements with the industry.

The Institute of Medicine recommended a litany of studies including animal models, observational studies, bench studies, and epidemiological studies. CDC never did those. Instead, it commissioned six epidemiological studies and used fraudulent techniques. They say statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do, and epidemiological studies are easy to manipulate.

None of those studies did what you would do if you wanted to find the answer, which is to compare outcomes in a fully vaccinated group to health outcomes in an unvaccinated group. CDC did that study in 1999. They brought in a team of scientists under a Belgian researcher named Thomas Verstraeten. They looked at children who had received the hepatitis vaccine within the first 30 days of life and compared those children to children who had received the vaccine later or not at all.

They found a 135% elevated risk of autism among the vaccinated children, and it shocked them. They kept the study secret and then manipulated it through five different iterations to try to bury the link. We know how they did it. They got rid of older children and kept younger children who were too young to be diagnosed. They stratified the data and did other tricks. Those studies were subjects of that kind of manipulation.

Meanwhile, external literature shows over a hundred studies that indicate there is a link. What we’re going to do now is all the kinds of studies the Institute of Medicine originally recommended. We’ll do observational studies, retrospective studies, epidemiological studies, and bench science. We’re going to do real science.

We’re going to make the databases public for the first time. We’ve gotten data from CMS (Medicaid, Medicare) and are getting the data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, the biggest repository for HMO health records. Those records have vaccination records and subsequent health claims. You can do a cluster analysis and look to see if there’s an association.

We’ll do some in-house studies, but more importantly, we’re making this data available for independent scientists so everybody can look at it. We have already put out grant requests to the general scientific community so that any scientist with credentials can apply for a grant and tell us how they want to study these data. We anticipate about 15 different major teams all trying to answer this question.

We should have initial indicator answers by September, and within six months we’ll have definitive answers after September, as large studies by independent scientists conclude.

Tucker Carlson:
And is it your expectation that those answers will differ from the status quo understanding?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
I think they will. My opinion is irrelevant—we need to stop trusting the experts blindly. We were told at the beginning of COVID, “Don’t look at any data yourself. Don’t do any investigation yourself. Just trust the experts.” Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy; it’s a feature of religion and totalitarianism.

In democracies, we have the obligation to do our own research and make our own determinations. Mothers don’t trust advertising; they do their own research. It’s a harder way to live, but it’s one of the burdens of citizenship. We’re going to give people gold-standard science.

We’re going to publish our protocols in advance, tell people what we’re doing, use data, and publish the peer reviews—which is never published by CDC studies. We’ll publish the raw data whenever we can and require replication of every study, which never happens at NIH. That’s something new: every study will be replicated.

Tucker Carlson:
I thought that was a basic precept of science.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
It is. Unfortunately, the kind of science done by NIH stopped doing that. It incentivized cheating, because a scientist’s career depends on how much you publish. If you get a grant and your hypothesis turns out to be wrong, often you cannot get that study published. A null result is science and ought to be published, but journals won’t do it, and they won’t publish anything critical of vaccines due to pressure and funding from pharmaceutical companies and revenue from reprints.

Marcia Angell, longtime editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, said you can’t believe anything in the scientific journals anymore. Richard Horton, longtime editor of The Lancet, said the same—that journals have become propaganda vessels for the pharmaceutical companies. Now you have to pay to publish; companies hire mercenary scientists—“biostitutes”—to validate products, and they manipulate data to get published.

Then the journals make available reprints that pharma reps take to doctors’ offices, pushing prescriptions. Doctors have incentives, too. There’s a published article that says 50% of revenues to most pediatricians come from vaccines. Insurers pay bonuses if 95% of the practice is fully vaccinated. That’s why if you want to go slow or change the schedule, your pediatrician may throw you out—you’re jeopardizing their bonus.

Twenty years ago, 20% of doctors worked for corporations; today 80% do. The corporation tells them to generate revenue. Doctors come out with massive debts; they’re under pressure to keep generating funds. The whole system is a bundle of perverse incentives where everybody makes money by keeping us sick.

Insurance companies make more money if the population is sick. A guy from AIG told me: if you’re Lloyd’s insuring all shipping, is it better if one ship sinks or 500? He said 500—then everybody has to get insurance. They take a cut of money flowing through; if claims are high, they raise premiums. Doctors, hospitals, and pharma make money keeping us sick. Every level is financially incentivized regardless of intention. We’re now the sickest nation in the world.

Tucker Carlson:
One of the reasons there hasn’t been much discussion—you said there were signals in 1999 of a connection between autism and vaccines—the response from American media was to throw you out, ban you, attack you. You’ve said pharma is the biggest source of revenue for a lot of media companies—buying protection with that money. Another perverse incentive, right? Can that be stopped?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Absolutely, it’s a perverse incentive. We’re one of only two countries that allow direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. There’s a bad Supreme Court case that essentially anointed pharmaceutical advertising with First Amendment protection. Political speech has absolute protection; commercial speech has a lower level. Pharma ads were regulated as commercial speech until the early 1990s. Changes in 1997 made it explode.

Roger Ailes once told me he couldn’t put me on to talk about mercury and vaccines—if he did, he’d have to fire the host, or pharma would pull ads within 10 minutes. He said about 75% of evening news ad revenue came from pharma. On a typical evening news show there were 22 ads—17 were pharma. That revenue keeps networks alive.

Could we end that? We’re looking at it. Many ads are misleading—even the music and imagery send a misleading message. You see people water-skiing and playing volleyball while side effects roll by. We’re looking at making them be more honest.

Pharma advertising is insidious because they advertise the most expensive versions, not generics. And unlike other ads, the consumer isn’t paying out of pocket—Medicare and Medicaid are. We taxpayers fund the drugs and even the ads are tax-deductible. Ads get people to buy drugs that may be ineffective or not the best option. Doctors under 11-minute visit quotas can either spend time talking patients out of requests or just write the prescription. Doctors hate this. The AMA has been against it for 30 years. It hurts public health, distorts markets, and it’s not a free market because the federal government pays.

Tucker Carlson:
So if, starting in September, the results of these massive datasets show a connection between autism and vaccines—vaccines the government promoted and in some cases effectively required—that’s a tort. There are a lot of injured people. How are they made whole? What happens to them?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
That’s complicated because in 1986 Congress passed the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and gave vaccine companies immunity from liability. No matter how reckless or toxic, you cannot sue them. That’s one reason we had an explosion in the vaccination program.

When I was a kid, we had three vaccines. By 1986, there were 11 doses of about five vaccines. Today, to go to school in states with mandates, an American child has to receive between 69 and 92 vaccines between conception and age 18—some given to the mom during pregnancy. Different brands have different dose requirements.

That’s a lot of vaccines. Each is designed to permanently alter your immune system. We now have an epidemic of immune dysregulation. There’s no way to rule out vaccines as a key culprit. Look at diseases that have become epidemic: diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, seizure disorders, ADD/ADHD, speech delay, language delay, tics, Tourette syndrome, narcolepsy, ASD—conditions we never saw when we were kids but are now ubiquitous. Autoimmune diseases like diabetes and RA, allergic diseases like peanut allergies, anaphylaxis, eczema.

All of those injuries are listed as side effects on manufacturers’ inserts. We’d have to be blind not to look at this as a potential culprit. We have to do the studies the Institute of Medicine told CDC to do. In 2013 the IOM told CDC there are 158 injuries suspected to be vaccine injuries; only 38 had been studied—most of those were positive for association. The others were never studied. CDC’s job is to study them, and it never did—deliberately. I’ve seen the emails showing CDC derailed studies. Independent studies can’t get published because publishers won’t publish anything critical of vaccines.

We need to remove the taboo and be honest with the American public.

Tucker Carlson:
It’s clear from the VAERS system that COVID vaccine injuries jumped to multiples of prior reports.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
There were more injuries reported from VAERS by the COVID vaccine than all other vaccines combined for the past 36 years. People say the link between autism and vaccines has been debunked, but those epidemiological studies only looked at one vaccine (MMR) and one ingredient (thimerosal). None of the vaccines administered during the first six months of life have ever been studied for autism outcomes.

The Institute of Medicine said the vaccines most likely to be culprits—the first-six-months schedule—have not been studied, with the exception of a DTaP study based on VAERS. They dismissed it because VAERS is unreliable, which is CDC’s own only surveillance system. They effectively said the only system CDC has is so bad we won’t count studies using it.

Many have said VAERS doesn’t work and we need a new system. In 2010 CDC designed a machine-counting system—a cluster analysis—led by Lazarus at Harvard Pilgrim. It compared machine-captured injuries to VAERS and found VAERS was capturing fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries, while the machine system could capture over 95%. Data showed injuries in about 2.7% of vaccines—about one in 37. CDC shelved it in 2010 and continued using VAERS.

We’re going to change VAERS—create either within it or supplementary to it a system that works, leveraging AI across HHS to analyze megadata and make better decisions. At FDA we’re accelerating drug approvals with AI, at CMS using AI to detect waste, abuse, and fraud, and at CDC to evaluate interventions. We can analyze populations to see which drugs work, which give the best value, and which have the most side effects. AI can revolutionize medicine.

Tucker Carlson:
What about all the people injured by the COVID vax? Some died, some were disabled, and they’re not getting help. Will that change?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Yes, though the big impediment is the 1986 act. We’re bringing in leadership to revolutionize the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program—“vaccine court”—which is funded by a 75-cent surcharge on every vaccine. It was supposed to be generous and fast, giving the tie to the runner, compensating injuries without traditional litigation, and it has paid out over $5 billion to about 12,000 people.

We’re looking at enlarging that program so COVID vaccine–injured people can be compensated. We’re considering enlarging the statute of limitations—currently three years—since many discover injuries later. There’s no discovery and no standard rules of evidence; DOJ lawyers historically protected the trust fund rather than the injured. We’re changing that now.

Tucker Carlson:
What’s the status of the COVID vaccine now? Who gets it? What are the recommendations and why?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Recommendations are that children under 18 are not recommended to get the vaccine, but they can through consultation with their physician. A new version was approved by FDA and will actually do real clinical trials. It’s being given to people 65 and older or with profound comorbidities, and everyone who takes it will be part of a clinical trial so we’ll get real data. There was data chaos with the other vaccine.

For example, the Pfizer vaccine had a higher all-cause mortality in the vaccine group than the placebo after six months—23% more deaths in the vaccinated group from all causes. Efficacy claims were based on two COVID deaths in placebo and one in vaccine—hence “100% effective.” People thought it prevented infection; it didn’t.

What they should have told people is that to prevent one COVID death you had to give 19,999 vaccines. If any of those vaccines were killing people, you’d cancel out the benefit.

Tucker Carlson:
Net-net, did the COVID vaccine kill more people than it saved?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
My opinion is irrelevant. We’re going to make the science available. I don’t know because studies were substandard and not designed to answer that question. There’s been obfuscation and suppression of discussion about injuries. Mark Zuckerberg said he was ordered by the White House to suppress anyone who mentioned vaccine injuries on Facebook and Instagram.

We know this because I sued the administration and discovery showed that 37 hours after taking the oath of office, they set up a group in the White House to suppress dissent on government policy. I was the first target—Facebook took me off Instagram where I had almost a million followers. They never showed a fact I got wrong; everything was cited to government databases or peer-reviewed publications. They invented “malinformation”—information that is factually true but inconvenient to the government.

Tucker Carlson:
What’s the status of the COVID vaccine and pregnant women? Are you satisfied mRNA technology is safe?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
The recommendation has been removed for pregnant women. I’m not satisfied on safety; the studies haven’t been done. There’s enough anecdotal reporting of profound injuries that may or may not be associated. We’re going to answer those questions, and there is a lot of skepticism in this agency about mRNA vaccines and technology.

Tucker Carlson:
What happened with the vaccine board? I keep reading you fired all these eminent scientists on the vaccine board.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
We fired that board because it was a sock puppet for the industry it was supposed to regulate. In 2002, the Government Oversight Committee held hearings about ASIP. They found 97% had undisclosed conflicts; many had disclosed conflicts too.

For example, the rotavirus vaccine was approved by a five-member board where four had direct financial interests in the vaccine. Paul Offit voted to add it while he had a rotavirus vaccine in development—once rotavirus is mandated, his product is virtually guaranteed a market. The vaccine they voted on was withdrawn within a year because it caused intussusception. His vaccine later replaced it; he and partners sold it to Merck for $186 million. It’s been said he voted himself rich.

The most glaring malpractice: we went from 11 vaccines in 1986 to 69–92 shots now, and except for COVID, not one had a pre-licensure safety trial with a true placebo. These were ushered in without proper safety studies, so nobody understands the risk profile. That’s corruption and agency capture.

If you can get your vaccine on the schedule, you typically have a billion dollars a year with a captive market and no downside. NIH may design it and hand it to a company; the company runs it through FDA and ASIP and gets it recommended. ASIP never turned away a vaccine; every one presented was recommended. Many target diseases are not casually contagious, and some vaccines don’t prevent transmission, making mandates hard to justify. We want to protect public health—including against chronic disease—and nobody contests that vaccines can cause chronic injuries that last a lifetime.

Tucker Carlson:
One of the reasons the system became so corrupt is Anthony Fauci. All this information was exposed, yet he seemed to thrive. He doesn’t have Secret Service protection any longer—you say President Trump took that away. He got immunity—why did he need a pardon in advance?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
I’d be speculating, but I think he was vulnerable for liability in creating the coronavirus—funding precisely that research at the Wuhan lab, giving them the technology. He also gave them the seamless ligation technique from Ralph Baric at UNC—a way of hiding laboratory origins of a manipulated virus. Public health would flag lab creation; hiding human tampering is what you’d want for biowarfare. Why give that to a Chinese military-run lab?

I try not to speculate on motives—just what he did. There are big career and professional incentives in gain-of-function. One of his fundees created an avian flu virus that could jump to mammals—why would you do that? It invites catastrophe, and they bragged about it.

Is Fauci beyond the reach of the law? Generally, yes—unless there is a truth commission like in South Africa or Central America, where truthful volunteers receive immunity so the public knows who did what; those who refuse and perjure themselves can be prosecuted.

Tucker Carlson:
The president issued an executive order on January 23rd to declassify files related to the murders of your uncle, father, and Martin Luther King. We haven’t seen all of them. Where is that process, and have your conclusions changed?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
No change. There are already millions of pages out there. On my uncle’s death, that ship has sailed—anyone willing to read the evidence will see he was killed by a conspiracy. In 1975, Congress—through the Church Committee—concluded it was a conspiracy. The Warren Commission, run by Allen Dulles, said single shooter; Dulles had reasons to lie and did.

Since then, millions of documents were released and many involved made confessions. On my father’s case, it’s more difficult; never properly investigated. The “woman in the polka dot dress” who appeared to be Sirhan’s handler is living openly in Tarzana; nobody has talked to her.

There were 77 eyewitnesses in the kitchen. Sirhan took two shots; one hit Paul Schrade and the other the doorjamb—later removed by LAPD. Sirhan was grabbed by six people, his gun turned away; he fired six more shots and all hit people. My father was shot by four shots from behind; three were contact shots, the fatal one behind his left ear at one to three inches. Sirhan was never behind him.

A likely shooter was a security guard who had just gotten his job within a week. My father fell on him and tore off his clip-on tie—this guard had steered him into the ambush with his left hand and had his gun in his right. LAPD did a malevolent job—destroyed 2,500 photographs before trial and other evidence including the doorjambs. They never confiscated the guard’s gun.

This guard worked at a Lockheed plant with a top security classification; the only employer he ever officially listed was the CIA. I tried to speak with him in the Philippines in 2019–2020; he kept raising the price, then refused. He has since passed away. There are enough flags that real investigation is warranted.

Am I confident all documents will come out this term? I’m confident President Trump will release anything he can. I don’t expect anything groundbreaking; with my uncle, we already have enough. Recent releases forced even The New York Times to admit Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset. There may be more validation, but I think we already have enough to win a case before a jury.

Tucker Carlson:
You were born here; your father was attorney general; you left Washington and returned as secretary. What’s it like?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
I didn’t expect to love living here. My wife is happy; we found a community and I love the people in this agency—gifted, committed, immensely talented. I really like the cabinet. President Trump put together an extraordinary cabinet. I’ve become friends with people I never thought I’d be friends with—Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, Scott Turner, Linda McMahon, and others.

One thing about President Trump—he knows how to pick talent. On the transition team I watched what he was doing: for each position he wanted to see three TV clips. He wanted communicators who can sell the program to the public, not just good administrators. This time around is different; he’s had time to grow and learn. We need a revolution in this country.

We have a $34 trillion debt and are spending $2 trillion more a year than we have, borrowing it from China, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. We have a $1.2 trillion trade deficit. Businesses are hurting from tariffs in the short term, but he’s looking over the horizon. This is unsustainable; we need radical changes, especially early when you have momentum.

He still has tremendous support. People are ecstatic and feel good about the country again. My uncle Ted Kennedy didn’t like Jimmy Carter—he banned liquor from the White House and served Fresca—but more importantly he talked about malaise. Reagan dismantled much of what Ted built, but Ted liked him because he made people feel good about being American—he inspired hope. President Trump does that.

I had believed he was one-dimensional and narcissistic. Getting to know him, he’s deep, multi-dimensional, thoughtful, immensely curious, inquisitive, and knowledgeable—encyclopedic in music, sports, and Wall Street stories. Contrary to the narcissist label, he’s empathetic; when he talks about Ukraine, he talks about casualties on both sides. He always thinks about how policies impact the little guy.

He’s a genuine populist. We were in a death spiral—morale and deficits. Who would have thought a president would address government costs and trade deficits so directly? He’s doing things at great political cost that will benefit the country 10 and 20 years from now. I’m proud to be part of it.

Tucker Carlson:
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thank you very much.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Thank you, Tucker.