RFK Jr. pledges to gut agencies that regulate vaccines and order the DOJ to investigate medical journals if he becomes president

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr pledged to gut funding for federal health agencies if he's elected president.
• The long-shot Democratic presidential hopeful told NBC News that he would not make his anti-vaccine stance the focal point of his campaign.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted anti-vaccine activist who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, told NBC News that he would gut funding for federal health agencies that monitor and recommend schedules for childhood vaccines.

Kennedy told NBC News' Brandy Zadrozny that he believes agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the advisory panels that recommend policies are "sock puppets" for the pharmaceutical and other industries they are tasked with regulating.

The son of US Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy also said that if he became president, he would order the Justice Department to investigate the editors and publishers of medical journals for "lying to the public."

Needless to say, there would be obvious First Amendment concerns to such an investigation.

Kennedy also pledged to stock the agencies with people he views as "good guys" but declined to name any possible appointees.

Kennedy launched his long-shot bid for the Democratic Party's nomination in April. Kennedy gained acclaim as an environmental lawyer before he pivoted to becoming one of the world's foremost skeptics and questioners of vaccines.

His own family members have publicly called him out for the "heartbreaking consequences" of his advocacy.

In an interview with NBC, Kennedy said that he would not be "leading with" vaccines as a presidential candidate. His own campaign manager, former US Rep. Dennis Kucinich, claimed that Kennedy is not "anti-vaccine."

"Let me address that, because first of all, I'm not anti-vax," Kucinich told NBC. "And if Mr. Kennedy was anti-vaccine, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. But he is not. He is for vaccine safety."

Zadrozny, who specializes in reporting on misinformation and extremism online, noted that an RFK Jr. Facebook group was discussing how to best explain Kennedy's anti-vaccine stance in a way that did not alienate voters.

Kennedy told NBC — and has touted for years — of a conspiracy that aspires to defend vaccines and silence people such as himself, even as the studies he points to are corrected or retracted. He also faced criticism, including from actress Cheryl Hines, his wife, for claiming that pandemic restrictions were more onerous than what the Nazis imposed. Kennedy, in a recently unearthed video, also claimed that the first HIV/AIDS cases were related to a "gay lifestyle" and the use of "poppers"

Kennedy's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.