Bill Gates played a key role in keeping Robert F. Kennedy, Jr out of President Donald Trump’s first administration, a new book says.
When Kennedy met with the president-elect at Trump Tower in early 2017, he told reporters afterward that Trump had asked him to chair a “commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity.”
Spokespeople for Trump later put out a statement saying that no decision had been made, and Kennedy ultimately never joined his first administration.
But according to the ABC reporter Jonathan Karl’s new book, “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America,” Trump met with Kennedy for a second time at the White House after he was sworn in, and during that meeting, he “appeared to be persuaded” to let Kennedy lead a new task force on autism and vaccines.
Trump had long been interested in a potential link between autism and vaccines. He raised the issue at a 2015 GOP primary debate, where he called for administering smaller doses of vaccines over a longer period of time.
Ultimately, it was Gates — a billionaire philanthropist who’s worked heavily to expand access to vaccines — who helped convince Trump otherwise, Karl writes.
Gates later met with Trump, telling him that allowing Kennedy to lead the panel “would be a terrible mistake,” according to the book.
Trump reportedly told Gates at that meeting that he would hold off on the idea as long as Kennedy could discuss his views with top officials at the National Institutes of Health, including Anthony Fauci, then the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
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When that nearly two-hour-long meeting took place in May 2017, Kennedy reportedly delivered a presentation on adverse health conditions that he said were caused by vaccines. Kennedy and Fauci then had a spirited discussion about the presentation.
Ultimately, Kennedy did not get a position in Trump’s first administration.
“Trump did keep his word to Gates,” Karl writes. “Kennedy was not appointed to any new task force on vaccines.”
Years later, after his own failed bid for the presidency, Kennedy endorsed Trump during the 2024 election, leading to his appointment as Health and Human Services Secretary in Trump’s second administration.
In that role, he has helped steer the health policies of Trump’s administration. Most recently, Trump himself alleged a link between Tylenol use by parents and autism in children, which drew pushback from many doctors and scientists.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which Kennedy now leads, declined to comment. Fauci, the Gates Foundation, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
