'Monumental disaster': Conservative turns on Trump pick

A conservative writer for a well-known conservative publication on Thursday honed in on two key issues that he views as disqualifying for Donald Trump’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the country’s next Health and Human Services secretary – a selection he urged Republican senators to reject.

Writing that Senate confirmation of RFK Jr. would be “a monumental disaster,” National Review editor Philip Klein took issue with the wide grip the prominent anti-vaxxer would wield over the massive department, which oversees the FDA, CDC and National Institutes of Health.

But it wasn't his positions on topics like vaccines and fluoride in the water that led Klein to sound the alarm.

“RFK Jr. is the only pick for HHS who would be pro-abortion and pro-government health care,” Klein said in his editorial hours after Trump’s pick of RFK Jr. became public. He added that HHS is the federal government’s largest department, and reminded readers that Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are all controlled by HHS.

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“It is through HHS that Republican presidents have the ability to influence abortion policy, but RFK Jr. earlier this year defended the right to ‘full-term abortion.’ After backtracking, he still said he supported abortion until viability,” Klein wrote.

He continued his take-down of RFK Jr. by saying that the Trump loyalist supported a type of single-payer system similar to a government-run option rejected during the Obamacare debate “for being a step toward socialized medicine.”

Klein then urged Senate Republicans to reject both the nominations of RFK Jr. and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as attorney general, but added that blocking RFK Jr. from his position is dire.

“My reasoning is that any AG pick is going to be a Trump toady,” he wrote.