Known for 'incredibly dangerous ideas': Robert Kennedy Jr tapped to head US Health Dept (DHS)

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00:00For more, we can speak to Natasha Lindstadt, professor in the Department of Government

00:04at the University of Essex. Hello to you and thank you for speaking to Paris Direct.

00:10Should we be surprised about who Trump has nominated so far? When he was campaigning,

00:15one of the things he mentioned was in his first term in presidency

00:19that he had picked people who weren't loyal. This time around, seems like he's doubling down.

00:25Exactly. I guess in many ways, we shouldn't be surprised. All of these picks are people

00:29who have been incredibly loyal to Trump. Some of them are loyal and are at least perfectly

00:37competent, but some of them are loyal and have some dangerous ideas or don't really have much

00:42experience at all. We were talking about Robert Kennedy there, and Trump wants to put him in

00:48charge of a department that, of course, will affect the lives of millions of people. Given

00:54that he's a vaccine skeptic, this poses real serious risks for children and for children's

01:00health. We know that with vaccinations from 1994 to 2023, they saved over a million lives and saved

01:06over 500 million hospitalizations and saved the country somewhere around $2.7 trillion in direct

01:12and indirect costs. It's true that not everyone is going to agree with the advice of Kennedy,

01:20but it will have an influence and could lead to other outbreaks. Of course, there's concerns

01:24from the dental community about his advice about not having fluoride in the water.

01:28He may have some ideas that are good, but he has some other ideas that are incredibly dangerous.

01:32Is there any chance that some of those dangerous ideas were just a part of campaigning and once

01:37in government, things might be a little bit more moderate?

01:42That's what I think some people were hopeful for after Trump won the election in 2016,

01:48but that administration pushed through some ideas that were very extreme,

01:53like the Muslim ban, for example, and that was hard to implement. I think some of the

01:56ideas that Trump has said he's just going to go move full force ahead on is deporting

02:05immediately 11 to 15 million immigrants. This is going to be really hard to execute and poses all

02:11kinds of risks about how do you find who people are that are immigrants who have not come here

02:15legally. It could lead to some forms of vigilante justice where people are trying to do Trump's

02:24bidding for him. I think you're going to see Trump trying to really cut into what he refers

02:30to as the deep state. We already have Elon Musk appointed to this new department of government

02:36efficiency along with Vivek Ramaswamy. Maybe they will intend to cut 50,000 civil servants.

02:44That's what Project 2025 outlined. Musk himself has already said there's going to be a lot of

02:48pain before there's anything that's good. I think that because Trump believes he has a mandate

02:54and the guardrails aren't there, he's appointing people that are more loyal than really competent

02:58and know the way democratic processes work. You may see him going with more full force than even

03:06in his last administration. Do you think America's institutions are at risk?

03:10It's really hard to say. It's really hard to know. It's incredibly unpredictable to know

03:21what Trump is going to do and how this is going to affect Americans. I think one of the things is

03:27that because he thinks that he has so much support, because he thinks that he won this election so

03:36decisively, he's going to want to try to go ahead with some of these policies like tariffs.

03:42If Americans are complaining now about inflation, if that policy of implementing high tariffs

03:48comes into effect, if the policy of pushing out millions of immigrants comes into effect,

03:55this is definitely going to increase prices way more than Americans had felt under the Biden

04:02administration. We've been talking about loyalty. These nominees have to be confirmed by the Senate

04:08that's controlled by the Republicans. Do you think any of them will be dissenting against

04:14these nominations? So that's going to be the big test. Will someone like Matt Gaetz, who had been

04:22up until recently investigated by the Justice Department, the very department that he would

04:26be in charge of if he is Attorney General, and he's being investigated for sex trafficking,

04:31if someone like that gets through, if someone like Pete Hegseth, who is going to be in charge

04:38of the Department of Defense, that's a department with several million employees. It has some

04:48800 billion that he would be in charge of. And he was just a Fox News anchor. He had no

04:55experience really managing people of more than maybe two or three people or small platoons.

05:00If those nominees get through, I think that's really a sign of how much control Trump has

05:05over the Republican Party. Running out of time, Natasha, but just wondering, you're in the UK.

05:11It's had its own bit of drama and politics in the U.K. What do you make of that?

05:15It's had its own bit of drama and politics in these recent years.

05:19What do the students make of what's happening stateside, though?

05:25I think everybody's just sort of shocked and surprised that this has happened again. I think

05:29seeing it from afar, you can see that Trump has been suffering from mental decline and pushing

05:35really extremist agenda. So it's mostly just surprise. But then at the same time, when you

05:41hear what Americans really want, he's able to tap into this much better than the Democrats were.

05:48And so we'll have to see if Trump really gives America what they think they want.

05:52All right. Thank you very much. Natasha Lindstedt speaking to us here. Thank you.

05:57Thanks for having me.

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