Trump picks Covid lockdown skeptic as head of key national health agency

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he will nominate Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, currently a professor of health policy at Standard University and director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, to lead the National Institutes of Health, one of the world’s foremost medical research entities and oversee its $47 billion in funding. In a statement, Trump said Bhattacharya would work with his Health and Human Services Secretary-designate, anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr, to “examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease.” He added: “Together, they will work hard to Make America Healthy Again!” Bhattacharya thanked Trump for the nomination on X. “The public did not know that there were prominent scientists that disagreed with the lockdown policies,” Bhattacharya said in an interview for Children’s Health Defense, an organization founded by Kennedy Jr. “They wanted to create an illusion of consensus.” In a statement on the announcement, Kennedy Jr said on X: “I’m so grateful to President Trump for this spectacular appointment. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is the ideal leader to restore NIH as the international template for gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine.” Also on Tuesday, Trump announced other appointments: Jim O’Neill as deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, John Phelan as secretary of the Navy, Kevin Hassett as director of the White House National Economic Council, Jamieson Greer as the United States trade representative and Vince Haley as director of the Domestic Policy Council.