Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services, in 2016 compared him to Adolf Hitler and lauded commentary that likened Trump’s supporters to Nazis and “belligerent idiots.”
Kennedy made the newly surfaced comments, which align with his more recent but not nearly as vociferous criticism of the president-elect, on his radio show Ring of Fire during Trump’s first primary campaign and in the wake of his first election win, according to CNN.
On an episode of the show in March 2016, Kennedy read and praised a scathing passage about Trump from the writer Matt Taibbi that RFK Jr. suggested was “beautifully” written, per CNN.
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“The way that you build a truly vicious nationalist movement is to wed a relatively small core of belligerent idiots to a much larger group of opportunists and spineless fellow travelers whose primary function is to turn a blind eye to things,” Kennedy read aloud. “We may not have that many outright Nazis in America, but we have plenty of cowards and bootlickers, and once those fleshy dominoes start tumbling into the Trump camp, the game is up.”
Adding his own commentary, Kennedy then made a direct comparison between Trump and the murderous German dictator, saying: “You know, he’s not like Hitler.”
“Hitler had like a plan, you know, Hitler was interested in policy,” Kennedy added. “I don’t think Trump has any of that. He’s like non compos mentis. He’ll get in there and who knows what will happen.”
Later, in December 2016, Kennedy again likened Trump’s political strategy to Hitler’s— but this time added a number of other reviled historical figures into the comparison, including Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini, Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and George Wallace.
“You can see that every statement that Donald Trump makes is fear-based,” Kennedy said, as Trump prepared to enter the White House. “Every statement he makes. You know, we have to be fear of the Muslims. We have to be fear of the Black people, and particularly the big Black guy Obama, who’s destroying this country, who’s making everybody miserable.”
Kennedy, previously an environmental lawyer, also used the show as a platform to attack Trump’s stances on the environment.
“Trump isn’t just gonna destroy the climate, but he’s also promised last week when he spoke to the oil industry, the shale gas industry, he promised that he would get rid of the Clean Water Act,” Kennedy said in December 2016. “So he’s just gonna open the floodgates to every kind of pollution… Trump’s prosperity is gonna be pollution-based prosperity.”
Kennedy told CNN that those statements were no longer representative of his views on Trump.
“Like many Americans, I allowed myself to believe the mainstream media’s distorted, dystopian portrait of President Trump,” he said. “I no longer hold this belief and now regret having made those statements.”
Kennedy’s public criticism of Trump continued well into 2024, albeit in less flaming rhetoric. In July of this year, he said Trump “was a terrible president.”
Kennedy’s tone only seemed to soften after his failed run at the Democratic presidential nomination. And after he ended his long-shot third-party candidacy, Kennedy endorsed Trump and quickly became one of his closest allies, and last week, his pick to head the HHS.
Kennedy, the son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, is known for peddling conspiracy theories, particularly about the dangers of vaccines.
Representatives for Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
