Former Recent York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a democratic presidential candidate, attends the U.S Conference of Mayors 88th Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C, January 22, 2020.
Yasin Ozturk | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Billionaire and public health advocate Mike Bloomberg on Tuesday excoriated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. health secretary, over his anti-vaccine record and urged the Senate to reject his bid to steer the nation’s top health agencies.
“Just imagine if RFK Jr. had been in office during Trump’s first term,” Bloomberg said on the Bloomberg American Health Summit in Washington D.C.
“Would Operation Warp Speed have even happened? And if it did, how long would the vaccines have been delayed? What number of fewer people would have gotten the shot? What number of more people would have died?”
“All we will say of course is that this: It will have made Covid much more deadly and much more economically painful,” he said.
Giving RFK Jr. the ability to steer U.S. health policy, he warned, could be “beyond dangerous, it might be medical malpractice on a mass scale.”
The previous Recent York City mayor devoted nearly all of his 19-minute speech to slamming Kennedy’s spread of disinformation about vaccines, including his “outrageous false claim” that the Covid-19 vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
Bloomberg, who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, has long advocated for public health reforms, each as mayor and thru his philanthropic efforts.
RFK Jr. initially ran for president in 2024 as a Democrat, but switched to an independent bid and later dropped out to endorse Trump.
An environmental lawyer and the son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s campaign provided him with a distinguished national platform and gave oxygen to his conspiracy theories about vaccines.
Bloomberg in Tuesday’s speech appealed on to U.S. senators not to verify RFK Jr. to the Cabinet role in the subsequent Trump administration.
“We will not allow Kennedy or Trump or anyone else to bring unimaginable suffering to the American people,” he said.
Bloomberg expressed hope that Senate Republicans will persuade Trump to reconsider nominating RFK Jr. before they’re asked to weigh in. But when Trump stands by his selection, then the Senate “has an obligation for our whole country, but especially to our youngsters, to vote no,” he said.
Bloomberg also admonished Democrats who appear open to letting RFK Jr. lead the Department of Health and Human Services due to his advocacy against junk food and processed foods.
“We do not need to choose from someone who’s pro-healthy food and pro-vaccine. Americans deserve each,” he said.
Bloomberg noted that he had fought for quite a few restrictions on unhealthy products while he was mayor, including an effort to ban large sugary drinks. Those fights garnered backlash from conservatives and affected consumer industries on the time.
But RFK Jr. has taken an identical tack, endorsing a plan that he says is meant to “Make America Healthy Again” alongside Republicans.
Bloomberg credited his own efforts with raising Recent Yorkers’ life expectancy, and touted the investments his philanthropic foundation continues to make to combat ailments like diabetes and heart disease.
“But when the federal government steps back from vaccines, all of that progress will vanish,” he said, suggesting that doing so could lead to tens of millions of useless deaths.
And if the federal government starts to speculate in “nutty conspiracy theories,” then funding for researching cures for other diseases might be set back by years, Bloomberg argued.
“It boggles the mind that the Senate would even consider giving Kennedy any power in any respect over American health policy,” he said.
“Whatever one might imagine of his positions on food policies, it’s nowhere near enough to beat his opposition to vaccines.”
