Sign up for The Agenda — Them’s news and politics newsletter, delivered to your inbox every Thursday.
Long before the Senate confirmation hearings begin, Donald Trump’s second-term cabinet already looks like a convention of Saturday morning cartoon villains — and nobody fills that role better than Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, who believes poppers cause AIDS.
Kennedy, who campaigned for president in 2024 before endorsing Trump in August, was selected by Trump this week to lead the HHS. In an announcement on Trump’s social media platform Truth social, the president-elect enthused that Kennedy would “Make America Great and Healthy Again.” But Kennedy has a long history of espousing demonstrably false talking points and conspiracy theories that could lead to significant harm if he’s confirmed, including years of vaccine skepticism, opposition to gender-affirming medical care, and the repeatedly debunked claim that the recreational drug poppers caused the AIDS crisis.
As journalist Justin Ling observed last year, Kennedy has enthusiastically promoted an untrue link between poppers and AIDS at least since his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci. In that book, Kennedy frequently cited the long-discredited work of AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg, falsely claiming that “heavy recreational drug use in gay men and drug addicts was the real cause of immune deficiency” among AIDS victims of the 1980s and 1990s. Kennedy went on to write that he had never “found any evidence that HIV ever actually kills a T-cell,” asserting that the connection between HIV and AIDS was itself the product of a medical conspiracy with former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci at its head.
“100% of the people who died — the first thousand who had AIDS were people who were addicted to poppers,” Kennedy (falsely) told an audience of supporters in a video posted by the watchdog social media account PatriotTakes in 2023. “There were people that were part of a gay lifestyle, where they were burning the candle at both ends […] and there were poppers on sale everywhere at the gay bars.”
As one may have guessed, Kennedy is not a doctor, but rather a former environmental lawyer. As we’ve reported previously, poppers may not be great for your lungs and heart, but they are not physically addictive and, contrary to a debunked theory from the early AIDS crisis, do not cause Kaposi’s sarcoma (a type of cancer associated with HIV/AIDS). Poppers are notably also not energy shots and do not typically give you the munchies, while we’re covering all our bases.
Of course, when it comes to RFK Jr., this bizarre obsession with a made-up Fauci conspiracy to suppress the truth about poppers is only the tip of the worm-eaten iceberg. Kennedy is best known for his anti-vaccine activism and numerous false statements about vaccines and autism, as well as his support for a ban on gender-affirming medical care for trans youth, including puberty blockers, which he has falsely labeled “castration drugs.” (As GLAAD noted, Kennedy once agreed to speak at a 2023 Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warriors Summit” before later pulling out, claiming scheduling issues.) While campaigning as a Democrat last year, Kennedy also blamed “sexual confusion [and] gender confusion” in children on “endocrine disruptors” in U.S. drinking water, and has called for an end to fluoridated water despite long-held medical consensus that such programs are beneficial to public health. Thankfully, his confirmation is still not set in stone, even with a Republican majority in the Senate.
“It seems to be that he fits with the pattern we’ve seen this week, which is the hiring of people that are not just unqualified for a particular Cabinet post, but unfit,” CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner said on Thursday. “Mr. Kennedy has already shown […] his penchant for not just promoting unproven ideas, but promoting disproven ideas.”
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.
