The US health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has fended off an attack by conservative firebrand and Donald Trump influencer Laura Loomer by issuing a statement of fealty to the president which calls it “a flat-out lie” that he is running for the White House in 2028.
Kennedy, 71, had been under pressure since Loomer, 32, expressed concern in a recent Politico interview that Stefanie Spear, a top aide of the HHS secretary, was trying to “utilize her position to try to lay the groundwork for a 2028 RFK presidential run”.
Loomer’s vigilante pressure campaigns within the White House have cost a number of Trump administration figures their jobs, including customs and border protection official Monte Hawkins as well as Food and Drug Administration vaccine regulator Vinay Prasad.
Hawkins had been accused by Loomer of having an “anti-Trump, pro-open borders and pro-[diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI] bias”. And she had labelled Prasad a “progressive leftist saboteur” before he was later reinstated by the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.
Loomer told Politico that while she is realistic about neutralizing Kennedy, his deputies were vulnerable. “I’m not naive enough to think that the president is going to get rid of RFK, but I will say that … there are concerns about some of the staffing decisions over at HHS,” she remarked.
A White House official told the outlet that they “would not be surprised if [Kennedy is] thinking about” running again after his 2024 candidacy prior to aligning himself with Trump. But the official claimed they “don’t think anyone thinks it’s a real threat”.
Kennedy responded on Friday, saying he would not strive for the presidency in 2028. The Kennedy family scion ran in 2024 for the Democratic party nomination before switching to become an independent candidate – and then cast his lot with Trump.
Trump – who in the run-up to his second presidential election victory dismissed Kennedy as a “radical left liberal” – rewarded him with a cabinet level post as well as his “make America healthy again” (Maha) mandate.
“The swamp is in full panic mode,” Kennedy Jr said in an X post. “DC lobby shops are laboring fiercely to drive a wedge between President Trump and me, hoping to thwart our team from dismantling the status quo and advancing [the Maha] agenda.”
Kennedy added that the so-called swamp, a Republican term for an entrenched Washington bureaucracy, was “pushing the flat-out lie that I’m running for president in 2028”.
“Let me be clear: I am not running for president in 2028,” he added. “My loyalty is to President Trump and the mission we’ve started.”
And he defended Spear. He said “attacks on my staff, especially Stefanie Spear – a fierce, loyal warrior for Maha who proudly serves in the Trump administration and works every day to advance President Trump’s vision for a healthier, stronger America – are proof we’re over the target.”
Kennedy also offered an overt expression of obeisance to his White House boss and political patron.
“We’ll keep moving forward, we’ll keep delivering wins, and no smear campaign will stop us,” he wrote.
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In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kennedy was planning to remove all the members of an advisory panel that determines what preventive health measures insurers are obliged to cover, reportedly viewing them as too “woke”, a pejorative Republican term for progressive.
The crossover of the administration’s anti-DEI campaign into healthcare came after an essay in the American Conservative magazine recommended the removal of taskforce members, saying it was embedded “left-wing ideological orthodoxy”.
Among the points it raised was the taskforce’s use of term “pregnant persons” and mention of a “lasting psychological impact and stigma of enslaved Black women being forced to act as wet nurses”.
HHS announced earlier in August it was halting $500m in mRNA vaccine research. And it has also moved to revive a taskforce on childhood vaccine safety, though vaccine injuries are known to be extremely rare.
Known as “Trump’s Rasputin” in some circles, Loomer views Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism as surging from the left – and not in pure ideological terms. She disputes that he views the issue correctly as a rightwing one, though the two may act in confluence.
She has previously labelled Kennedy, in the New York Times, as “a very problematic person” who “is running a shadow presidential campaign” from his office.
“There’s been some things that have happened,” Loomer told Politico. “There’s been several things that have happened at HHS that are contradictory to the initial promises made.”
