Donald Trump expressed skepticism about vaccines in a private phone conversation with independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that was posted online.
Former President Trump and Kennedy spoke at the start of the Republican convention, where Trump has been officially nominated as the Republican Party’s candidate for the third cycle in a row. A video of their call was posted online by someone in Kennedy’s orbit. In the video, Trump expresses concerns related to vaccinating children, which he says can cause babies to “change radically.”
“You feed a baby…a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a 10-pound or 20-pound baby… And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically,” Trump tells Kennedy. “And then you hear that it doesn’t have an impact, right?” Trump adds that he and Kennedy had talked about vaccines a “long time ago.”
Kennedy apologized for the leak Tuesday morning, posting on social media platform X that he was filming with a videographer at the time of the call and “should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately,” he wrote. “I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president.” When asked for comment, the Trump campaign referred TIME to Kennedy’s social media post.
The topic of conversation should come to no surprise to voters who understand both candidates’ fraught histories of comments about vaccines. Trump was President at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and oversaw the federal effort to support development of the vaccines. But he has espoused misleading claims about vaccines and politicized vaccine mandates.
As President, Trump touted his Administration’s success in rolling out a coronavirus vaccine at rapid speed to combat the pandemic. “From the instant the coronavirus invaded our shores, we raced into action to develop a safe and effective vaccine at breakneck speed. It would normally take five years, six years, seven years, or even more,” Trump said in December 2020. In 2021, he called the COVID-19 vaccines “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.”
However, Trump also refused to get the vaccine on national television. After revealing that he received a booster shot in December 2021 during the final stop of “The History Tour,” an interview show Trump was doing with Bill O’Reilly, Trump was booed by the audience in Dallas.
Kennedy is a well-known vaccine conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly made false claims about vaccines causing autism—despite studies showing that there is no correlation between vaccination and autism. Research also shows that vaccines help build herd immunity and protect the body against disease. In 2021, Kennedy called the COVID-19 vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” Kennedy has served as the chairman of the board for Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group (though he is currently on leave from this role as he runs for President). Kennedy has also previously suggested that his spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that can impact voice and speech, is a side effect of the flu vaccine.
In 2017, Kennedy said that Trump offered him the chance to chair a commission that would investigate “vaccine safety and scientific integrity,” per CNBC. However, the Trump transition team later said that there was no formal decision made to form a commission or have Kennedy lead it. In the recent call, Trump said he’d “love” to have Kennedy “do something” with his campaign. “It would be so good for you and so big for you,” Trump said.
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