Trump’s First Election Promise Is Making Us Sick (Literally)

Donald Trump is already musing about repainting the walls of the federal government post-inauguration—and it appears to involve allowing notorious vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. free rein over the nation’s health policies.

Delivering his first speech after being declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election, Trump promised a cheering crowd that Kennedy’s name would have a place in his second administration.

“​​He’s going to help make America healthy again,” Trump said as the crowd began to chant “Bobby.”

“He’s a great guy, he really means it, he wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him go to it,” he continued. “I just said, but, Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold—oil and gas—we have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia.”

“Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby,” Trump added.

During an interview with NBC News’s Dasha Burns on Monday, Trump refused to promise that he wouldn’t ban vaccines, instead outlining his intentions to talk to Kennedy and “talk to other people” and make a decision. “He’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” Trump said of Kennedy.

During the same interview, Trump signaled that he would be open to removing fluoride from all public water systems—a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association.

Last week, Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick insisted that vaccines are “not proven” and shared that he had a more than two-hour conversation with Kennedy, a notorious vaccine conspiracy theorist who has been promised “control” of several federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, under a second Trump administration.

Lutnick claimed that Kennedy—who has admitted that his brain has been eaten by worms and who had to apologize for tying vaccine conspiracies to what happened in Germany during the Holocaust—has plans to strip even long-standing vaccines from the market.

Vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The jabs are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox, a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Donald Trump’s campaign lackeys, took aim at someone who has turned out to be one of the only people in the country interested in holding the former president accountable.

“To Jack Smith and your team: It is time to look forward to a new chapter in your legal careers as these politically motivated charges against President Trump hit a wall,” Graham wrote in a post on X early Wednesday.

“The Supreme Court substantially rejected what you were trying to do, and after tonight, it’s clear the American people are tired of lawfare. Bring these cases to an end,” the South Carolina Republican wrote. “The American people deserve a refund.”

While Smith’s election interference case is expected to continue in the short term, President-elect Trump has previously vowed to have Smith canned on his first day in office, and even threatened to deport him. That kind of fascistic rhetoric didn’t seem to scare off any voters Tuesday, so now we’ll just wait to see if he was kidding.

Whoever Trump appoints as attorney general, upon entering office, will sink that case as well as Trump’s classified documents case, which Smith has appealed after Judge Aileen Cannon tossed it out in July. Trump might even appoint Cannon as attorney general (she previously appeared on a short list for the spot), giving the Trump-appointed judge the chance to obliterate that case yet again.

In another post on X, Graham toasted ousting the Democrats, who he claimed wanted to “pack the Supreme Court”—something that Trump is very likely to attempt during his next four years in office.

Donald Trump has won the majority of white women voters for the third straight time. 

Even after destroying abortion rights, even after a judge went to painstaking lengths to clarify that Trump raped E. Jean Carroll, and even as the Harris campaign targeted the imaginary “silent majority” of women hiding their political views from their husbands, 52 percent of white American women showed us who they are: Trump supporters.

National exit polls show that Trump easily carried white women’s vote, as white men too were 59 percent for Trump. For comparison, Black men and women went 20 percent and 7 percent for Trump, respectively.

There was so much liberal hand wringing over Harris’s perceived issues with Black male voters. Black men were too sexist, too uneducated, and were seen as a real vulnerability for her chances. “This election has taught me that there is a true intellect deficiency amongst our Heterosexual Black Men. It’s a sad reality,” one viral tweet on X read. A bit earlier, Barack Obama delivered an entire speech blaming Black men for their reluctance to back Harris. 

And yet Harris won three-quarters of Black men, while a much larger, much more powerful group of voters (white women) rejected the party begging for their votes for the third time in a row.

The Harris campaign tried, with good reason, to convince white women that their future was at stake. Trump is all but guaranteed to oversee a further rollback in reproductive rights, and the president-elect has also openly flirted with a federal ban on abortion. 

And yet that was not a winning message for white women. A recent Times/Siena showed that the majority of white women, like their white male counterparts, saw inflation and the economy as their top voting issue. Abortion was second, and immigration was third. To be sure, there is a notable age split here: Gen Z women only went 36 percent for Trump, women aged 30 to 44 went 41 percent for Trump, women aged 45 to 64 went 48 percent for Trump, and women over 65 backed the former president 45 percent.  

At a dinner this month, Trump taunted one of the pro-Harris affinity groups. “There’s a group called ‘White Dudes for Harris,’” he said, “but I’m not worried about them at all, because their wives and their wives’ lovers are all voting for me.”

Democrats banked on white women being more conscious voters than white men, more fatigued by the years of hateful and incendiary rhetoric from Trump. They conjured up an image of white women voting in secret droves for the first woman president. It just cost them another election.

On Tuesday, Arizona voters chose to expand access to abortion and enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. 

Arizonians passed the Arizona Abortion Access Act, or Proposition 139, which establishes the right to an abortion until viability, which is usually considered to be around 24 weeks. The measure also creates exceptions after fetal viability to protect the life, or physical or mental health, of the pregnant person.  

Earlier this year, Arizona politicians undid a near-total abortion ban, repealing a Civil War–era abortion ban.  Prior to voters taking to the polls, the state had a far more restrictive 15-week abortion ban on the books. 

Seven states chose to protect or expand abortion access this election (eight states if you include Florida, where a majority of voters passed a pro-abortion ballot measure but did not meet the required 60 percent threshold).

One bit of damper on this good news: In states like Arizona, where abortion rights have been expanded, state Supreme Courts will ultimately, and frighteningly, have the final say. 

Donald Trump’s victory speech after winning the presidential election early Wednesday morning was darkly triumphant.

The president-elect thanked his supporters, including billionaire and world’s richest man Elon Musk.

“Oh, let me tell you, we have a new star. A star is born. Elon. No, he is. Now he’s an amazing guy. We were sitting together tonight. You know, he spent two weeks in Philadelphia and different parts of Pennsylvania campaigning,” Trump said, before going off on a tangent about Musk’s “beautiful, shiny white” rocket.

Trump has said that he wants to put Musk in charge of government efficiency. Musk has claimed, with no evidence, that $2 trillion in waste could easily be cut from the federal budget, an act that would undoubtedly cause severe consequences for the American people.

“He’s, he’s turned out to be a good choice. I took a little heat at the beginning, but he was I knew I knew the brain was a good one, about as good as it gets,” Trump said.

Trump also credited “fantastic people” like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with helping him win. Kennedy’s role in the administration will be worrying, as Trump plans to give a major public health role to the anti-vaccine activist.

“[Kennedy] came out. And he’s going to help make America healthy again. And now he’s a great guy and he really means it. He wants to do some things, and we’re gonna let him go to it. I just said, ‘But Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold, oil, and gas. We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby,’” Trump said, perhaps in reference to Kennedy’s environmental activist past against fossil fuels.

Trump proudly looked back at his first term as a roadmap to his second.

“This is the most important job in the world. Just as I did in my first term, we had a great first term, a great, great first term. I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept. We’re going to keep our promises. Nothing will stop me from keeping my word to you, the people. We will make America safe, strong, prosperous, powerful, and free again,” Trump said.

Those promises include mass deportations, taking revenge for every slight against him, including for the many legal charges against him; implementing parts of Project 2025 (despite his denials); imposing extreme tariffs likely to cripple the economy; and many other disastrous acts. The next four years will be difficult for many Americans, depending on how many checks on the president’s power there will be this time, if any.