Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as a new secretary for health and social services (HHS), a few hours after being confirmed in the Senate controlled by the Republican Thursday by a tight vote of 52-48 which was almost entirely according to the party parts.
Kennedy stood in the oval office alongside his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, and accompanied by her children, while he placed his hand on a Bible and swore the oath. Supreme court judge Neil Gorsuch swore in Kennedy.
After the ceremony, Kennedy spoke to the participants of his first visit to the Oval office.
“My first time in this oval office was in … 1962. I came here, and I had a meeting with my uncle who was president at the time, where we talked about the environment. He was very deeply involved, as we all know, in physical fitness restaurant in this country.
McConnell warns RFK Jr. to avoid the polio vaccine
“For 20 years, I got on my knees every morning and prayed for God to put me in a position where I could end the chronic childhood illness in this country,” said Kennedy.
“On August 23 of last year, God sent me President Trump. He held all the promises he made to me. He kept his word in each account and went far beyond. .. .
The leader of the Senate minority, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Arrives at the American Capitol in Washington, DC, for a meeting with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the war effort against Russia on September 26. (AP / J. Scott Applewhite)
Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell Senator McConnell was the only republican to vote against the appointment of Kennedy. McConnell, the former head of the longtime GOP Senate, had the child polio and is a major supporter of the vaccines.
Kennedy, the famous skeptical vaccine and the environmental crossroads that ran for the White House in 2024 before ending his candidacy and approving Trump, needed a simple majority to be confirmed by the Senate.
The Democrats of the Senate repercussions against RFK Jr. in the end of the evening before the vote
The former republican presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, shakes hands during a campaign rally in Desert Diamond Arena on August 23, 2024, in Glendale, Ariz. (Rebecca Noble / Getty Images)
“I am a survivor of the childhood polio. In my lifetime, I saw vaccines save millions of lives of devastating diseases across America and the world. The Americans who create their survival and their quality of life in scientific miracles, “said McConnell after the Kennedy vote.
Kennedy, whose frank opinions on Large pharmacy And the food industry has also triggered controversy, said it was aimed at moving the objective of the agencies it would supervise towards the promotion of a healthy lifestyle, in particular the revision of food directives, the vision of food Ultra-transformed and the realization of the deep causes of chronicle diseases.
The push is part of her campaign “Make America Healthy Again”.
The Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as a Trump health secretary
(LR) President Donald Trump, actress Cheryl Hines and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Social Services, during a ceremony at the White House Oval Office in Washington, DC, Thursday, February 13 2025. (Jason C. Andrew / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump regularly criticized Kennedy during his independent presidential candidacy, accusing him of being a “radical liberal left” and a “democratic plant”.
Kennedy retaliated, affirming in an article on social networks that Trump’s blows against him were “a barely coherent dam of wild and inaccurate demands”.
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However, Kennedy again made the headlines in August when he abandoned his presidential candidacy and approved Trump.
Kennedy had long been identified as a democrat and has repeatedly invoked his late father, former senator Robert F. Kennedy, and his late uncle, former president John F. Kennedy, who were both murdered in the 1960s .
Paul Steinhauser of Fox News Digital contributed to this report
