Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. criticized former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, blasting him for what he says are deep ties to Big Pharma.
“Donald Trump owns stock in Pfizer and J&J, who bought fancy tickets to his inauguration and put pharma shills high in his administration,” Kennedy tweeted, linking to a a separate tweet from a journalist detailing what he framed as a number of conflicts of interest between. Trump and the pharmaceutical industry during his time in the White House.
“That’s how Washington works. It’s not the exception, it’s the rule. It’s a form of legal bribery,” Kennedy added. “This kind of thing is so normal that many people take for granted that it is normal. I promise you, corruption will not be normal when I am the President.”
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Kennedy journalist Pedro Gonzalez of Chronicles Magazine mentioned, noted in his tweet Pfizer’s donation of $1 million to Trump’s presidential inauguration committee followed his 2016 election victory.
Gonzalez also pointed to the successive nominations of former Trump administration officials Scott Gottlieb and Alex Azar, and their connections to the pharmaceutical industry as an executive and lobbyist. He then referred to the former president’s financial disclosure forms submitted last month that showed he owned stock in Pharma giants Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.
Gonzalez claimed that Trump “killed” plans for a vaccine safety commission, which he said would include Kennedy, because of his connections to Big Pharma. The group, according to a 2018 report by The Guardian, is intended to be made up of vaccine skeptics and will investigate a potential link between childhood vaccinations and autism.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spoke during a news conference in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, Friday, Nov. 20, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Kennedy maintained that the Trump White House contacted him to be part of the group, but said he stopped hearing from the White House after several meetings with Trump’s transition team, according to a report by The Guardian.
“Trump bragged last year about how big the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune was after the company received $1 billion for Operation Warp Speed. He protested when the J&J drug was temporarily pulled from the market when people continued to the death of its connection before it was completely nixed this year,” added Gonzalez.
Fox News Digital confirmed Pfizer’s 2016 donation to Trump’s inauguration committee through Federal Election Commission records.
Former President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (AP/Getty Images)
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Fox reached out to the Trump campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
