Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent his career as an environmental lawyer and vaccine-skeptical activist before entering politics.
Now that President-elect Donald Trump has nominated him to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services in his upcoming administration, many of Kennedy’s controversial viewpoints are being reexamined.
The U.S. Health Secretary oversees the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), managing programs that promote public health, medical research, and social services, including Medicare and Medicaid. They are responsible for shaping national health policy, responding to health crises, and ensuring the well-being of all Americans.
Kennedy has promoted several conspiracy theories about vaccines, but another conspiracy theory that he has discussed is chemtrails.
Newsweek has contacted Kennedy via email for comment.
What are chemtrails?
The conspiracy theory, which has existed since the 1990s, claims that the government or another secretive organization is using commercial or military aircraft to release chemicals or metals into the atmosphere, visible in the white lines aircraft leave behind in the sky.
ASSOCIATED PRESS/Torsten Sukrow and Carlos Osorio
Outside the conspiracy theory, the white lines are called contrails (short for condensation trails). They are line-shaped clouds produced by aircraft exhaust and are composed primarily of water in the form of ice crystals.
Versions of the theory argue that the “chemtrails” are used for anything from weather modification to mind control.
A study was conducted in 2016 by Carnegie Science, University of California Irvine called “Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program.”
It surveyed the world’s leading atmospheric scientists who categorically rejected the existence of a secret spraying program. The scientists specifically rejected that seemingly abnormal concentrations of aluminum in the environment were the result of spraying.
What has Kennedy said?
In August 2023, a user on X called @BGatesIsaPsycho posted a video claiming to depict a voice-altered audio tape of a “chemtrail pilot whistleblower.”
The “whistleblower” in the video claimed that chemtrail pilots are chosen from the elite ranks of military pilots, are “hardened to humanity,” and “could care less about killing off unwanted or leaching aspects of America and the world.”
Kennedy replied to the post writing, “We are going to stop this crime,” receiving 5.2 million views on his comment.
@BGatesIsaPsycho is a notorious spreader of false information. X uses a user-generated fact-checking tool called “community notes,” where if a post contains false or misleading information, viewers can request that a note be added to show relevant contextual information. If enough verified users mark the community note as helpful, it gets added to the public post.
The website community-notes-leaderboard.com tracks all accounts on X based on how many of their posts have had a community note added. @BGatesIsaPsycho is the single most community-noted user on the platform, with 817 noted posts.
In March 2023, Kennedy hosted chemtrail activist Dane Wigington on his podcast. The episode was titled Are Chemtrails Real?
In the episode, Kennedy said he began to consider the issue of chemtrails when he and actor Woody Harrelson saw contrails from a plane transform into clouds. He asked Wiginton several questions about the theory, including at one point asking him, “What proof do we have that chemtrails are happening?” and “How come we don’t see more whistleblowers coming out?”
At one point he speculated as to whether chemtrails are causing “accumulations of aluminum, even in places in very, very remote parts of the earth.”
Wigington said in response that planes are spraying aluminum into the environment.
Wigington told Kennedy “What we’re seeing in our skies are not condensation trails. In almost all cases they are sprayed particulate trails.”
Kennedy said that it was “kind of frightening to think that somebody may be putting large amounts of bioavailable aluminum into the environment, spraying it in microscopic particulates from airplanes.”
The scientists surveyed in the 2016 study specifically rejected the claim that excess environmental aluminum was the result of spraying. Most rejected that aluminum concentrations have increased at all.
Of the experts who thought that aluminum concentrations might have increased, the increase was primarily attributed to changes in industrial, agricultural, or natural processes.
