RFK Jr’s podcast has glimmers of his old show – will he address health issues differently?

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s new Secretary Kennedy Podcast is a show that, so far, appears designed to promote Trump administration talking points over any specific public health message.

Though, based on the trailer and episode one, which dropped last week, one might expect the Secretary Kennedy Podcast to be quite similar to the health secretary’s former show, The RFK Jr Podcast. In the trailer that dropped ahead of his new podcast’s release, Kennedy says: “Children are sicker, chronic disease is exploding and the answers we’ve been given aren’t working” – talking points that were common on his old series. He even adds: “Many of us have come to the conclusion that the government actually lies to us,” a statement that might have served his former podcast better, given that Kennedy is now a senior figure in the government.

During the original trailer for the RFK Jr Podcast, which is 18 minutes long and launched in early February 2021, around when people first began receiving Covid vaccines, Kennedy says: “We’ve come together today to protest this coup d’etat by big data, by big telecom, by big tech, by the big oil and chemical companies, and by this global public health cartel led by Bill Gates and the WHO. It now amounts to $2tn and wants to magnify and amplify its wealth and its power over our lives, over our liberties. It wants to subvert our democracies and wants to destroy our sovereignty and our control over our lives and our children’s health.”

The RFK Jr Podcast, for much of its run, aligned its messaging with Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy founded which raises millions yearly in donations that go towards lobbying, litigation and media campaigns targeting vaccines and chemical manufacturers. Children’s Health Defense does not provide or develop any healthcare solutions.

Early episodes of Kennedy’s first show focused on raising suspicions about the government response to Covid-19, the safety of Covid vaccines, and the motivations of Anthony Fauci, who served as chief medical adviser to former president Joe Biden. A May 2021 episode, titled “Former Pfizer Vice President Dr. Mike Yeadon Speaks Out”, is exemplary of the early agenda of the show. Yeadon left Pfizer in 2011, nearly a decade before Pfizer began its Covid vaccine development, but Yeadon claims to have insight about Pfizer’s corruption during the Covid-19 vaccine development process. Shortly before appearing on The RFK Jr Podcast, Yeadon asserted, falsely, that asymptomatic people cannot spread Covid, and that healthy people face more risk than benefit from Covid vaccines.