The Health Secretary accused his former party of abandoning core values in blind opposition to President Trump

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has accused the Democratic Party of abandoning its traditional values and transforming into a pro-war, pro-censorship force defined largely by opposition to President Donald Trump.

In a wide-ranging interview with conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson published Monday, Kennedy said the Democratic Party now instinctively reverses positions as soon as Trump adopts them.

"The Democrats were the anti-war party," Kennedy said. "But as soon as [Trump] expressed his opposition to the Ukraine war, they became the war party." 

"They were the party of free speech," he continued. "When President Trump started advocating for free speech... the Democrats became openly for censorship."

Kennedy, a longtime Democrat who briefly ran as an independent candidate in 2024 before supporting Trump and joining his cabinet in early 2025, said he continues to champion the same principles but now faces opposition from former allies.

"These were people I was friends with my whole life and I have not changed... but the party has just a knee-jerk reaction against anything that is Trump," he told Carlson.

Kennedy added that Democrats, once critical of the CIA and trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), shifted to support both once Trump voiced criticism. He also accused the party of undermining women's sports, noting that his uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, had helped write Title IX, a US federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination.

"You can go on and on with those examples, but President Trump is literally dictating the platform of the Democratic Party. Anything that he says, they're going to be against," he said, noting that this pattern reflects a deeper problem in American politics.

"You know that partisanship by its nature is dishonest and it is the enemy of democracy," RFK Jr. warned. "And in George Washington's farewell speech, he said that he was very frightened about the rise of the political party because they would become self-interested rather than patriotic."

Kennedy, the founder of the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense, has gained prominence in the US for questioning the safety and effectiveness of childhood inoculations and promoting the claim that they are linked to autism - a theory widely rejected by the scientific community. He was also a vocal critic of the World Health Organization's Covid-19 response measures, including lockdowns and the rapid rollout of experimental vaccines.

Despite his controversial reputation, Kennedy denies being opposed to immunization, noting that his own children have been vaccinated. He has repeatedly stated that he advocates for stricter safety testing and more rigorous studies. After Kennedy endorsed Trump, the president vowed to give him broad authority over healthcare policy, saying he would let Kennedy "go wild."

Kennedy said most opposition to his policies as Health Secretary comes not from industry experts but from media and political operatives. "I get opposition from proxies to the industry. Yes. And I think the major opposition that I feel is from the mainstream media and from Democrats," he said.