‘Not a Good Look’: Erick Erickson Blasts Trump Transition Team Blocking Anti-Abortion HHS Deputy Pick As ‘Too Controversial’
Popular conservative radio host Erick Erickson blasted the Trump transition team for reportedly blocking a pro-life activist from a prominent role inside the Department of Health and Human Services on Saturday.
Politico reported this week that anti-abortion activist Roger Severino – a Project 2025 co-author – had been floated for a senior role inside Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s HHS but that the first Trump term alum was blocked by his team amid concerns he might alienate moderates.
Erickson shared the reporting and commented, “Trump is putting a pro-abortion activist in charge of HHS and his team is blocking a great pro-life champion from a position in HHS. This is not a good look.”
Politico reported:
Donald Trump’s transition team has rejected a push to install a prominent Project 2025 author in a senior role at the Department of Health and Human Services over concerns that his strident anti-abortion views would prove too controversial. Anti-abortion groups had been lobbying Trump’s HHS secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to select Roger Severino, a longtime anti-abortion stalwart, as the department’s deputy secretary.
The installation of Severino, director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights during the first Trump administration, was aimed at allaying some of the groups’ concerns about Kennedy’s abortion record.
But senior Trump officials rejected Severino because of the anti-abortion policies he outlined in the health care section of Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for a second Trump presidency that became a lightning rod on the campaign trail — according to six people familiar with the situation, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. Some of them worried Severino’s nomination would further inflame fears among voters and moderate Republican lawmakers that Trump might widely restrict abortion access, distracting from the rest of the president-elect’s agenda, though they added that Trump officials remain open to appointing other anti-abortion officials at HHS.
Earlier this week, Erickson urged Senate Republicans to block Kennedy as HHS secretary, describing him as a “nut job.” While making an appeal to traditional conservatives, Erickson made an issue of Kennedy’s perosnal life – inlduing his marriages and extramarital affairs.
“And you wanna put a pro-abortion Kennedy progressive womanizer in charge of that position?!” he said. “Because he questions the Covid vaccine and thinks we shouldn’t have red dye number 5 in food?”
Erickson concluded Kennedy did not have a “worldview that any Bible-believing Christian should support.”
