The White House spent much of this year trying to keep Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. quiet – but with Republicans now bracing for a possible blue wave, President Donald Trump is letting him off the leash.
The Washington Sun reported Thursday that West Wing officials have stopped tightly managing Kennedy's message, and administration sources say the change is coming from Trump himself.
"They've given him flexibility to be himself and do his Bobby Kennedy thing," one senior administration official told the Sun.
It's a big change from earlier in the year. White House aides had pressed Kennedy to talk about whole foods and exercise and to stay away from vaccines.
They also canceled a TV and digital ad campaign for his "Take Back Your Health" initiative because they worried about bad press, and many both inside and outside the administration were talking about Kennedy being replaced after the midterms, possibly by Medicare and Medicaid chief Mehmet Oz.
Now Kennedy is one of the most-used surrogates in Trump's circle. He has campaigned in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado and Texas – all states where Republicans are trying to cling to their House and Senate seats.
Kennedy polls better than the rest of the party's leaders – a recent Harvard-Harris survey put his favorability at 43 percent, compared with 41 percent for Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
The White House has also stopped holding back his agenda. In August, Trump signed an executive order backing Kennedy's changes to the childhood vaccine schedule. When Kennedy told an anti-vaccine group last month that the administration would look into chemtrails and electromagnetic fields, the White House said nothing.
"You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House," Kennedy told the group.
Republicans on the ballot, however, are not exactly eager to talk about him. The Sun reached out to five House candidates and two gubernatorial candidates whose districts and states Kennedy had visited, and none agreed to an interview.
Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI), who hosted Kennedy in his toss-up district in June, was one of the few willing to speak, and he described the HHS secretary as someone who "represents a brand of politics and a constituency that is outside the normal coalition."
Republicans are betting that Kennedy can turn out voters the party has trouble reaching, especially mothers who lost faith in the medical establishment during the pandemic. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told the Sun the strategy has become "a nightmare coalition" for her party.
But there's a real risk, too. A KFF poll in January found that most Americans disapproved of how Kennedy was doing his job.
Trump has seen him as a political asset for a while. "I have to be very careful that Bobby likes us," the president said at a January Cabinet meeting.
