This article originally appeared onThe Defenderand was republished with permission.
Guest post byBrenda Baletti, Ph.D.
A former White House public health adviser today publicly admitted that during the first Trump administration, she wasdirected to limit Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s access to senior officials.
In a Substack post titled “Confessions of a White House Public Health Priestess,” epidemiologist Katy Talento, who served on the White House Domestic Policy Council, describes an internal effort tomanage which voices were allowed into federal health discussions.
“I kept Robert F. Kennedy Jr. out of the West Wing. Now I owe him an apology,” Talento wrote.
Talento did not say who specifically directed her to limit Kennedy’s access.
Commenting on the essay,Children’s Health Defense(CHD) CEO Mary Holland said:
“I wish that more people would come out and say that they were mistaken. I think it is a brave thing to do and the world would benefit from more people saying, ‘I was misled, and I did things that I now regret.’”
Talento’s essay is a retrospective on two decades in public health, including roles advising lawmakers and working at senior levels of federal policymaking.
She details her transformation from a key player advising on mainstream vaccine and public health policies, and supporting vaccines “religiously… because I had been trained in the orthodoxy of public health,” to becoming skeptical after what she calls a “cascade of eye-opening episodes.”
Source: The Vigilant Fox
