Florida Surgeon General Ladapo, who eschewed Covid norms, ready to serve Trump admin, make 'impact'

The 2024 campaign is the first since the end of the COVID-19 emergency. And important figures who turned from mainstream to maverick as a result may play crucial roles in an effort to transform the medical establishment.

One key player is Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who spoke with me a few weeks before the Nov. 5 election about what he’d like to do in the next Trump administration.

"I actually would like to be secretary of HHS," he said. "And the reason I would like to do that is because I'm in it for impact. Like, if I can't have impact, I'm not in it."

Dr. Ladapo’s desire to have impact became clear during the pandemic. When Covid hit, he was a professor of medicine at the University of California, researching heart health. He became one of the mainstream figures to break away and speak out early against what they considered the disastrous shutdowns, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mandates and government misinformation.

"The pandemic was really just something remarkable," he said, “because ... somehow you got so many people with good intentions to engage and really enroll in things that are obviously very clearly immoral and badly intended. And so that's a remarkable thing."

Born in Nigeria, Ladapo earned his medical degree and a doctorate in health policy at Harvard University.

In September 2021, he was tapped by Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis to be his state’s surgeon general.

"I felt very clearly that my objective, my role, was to reset the tone," he said. "And the tone was ‘fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.’ You know, ‘Must do this, must do this, must do this. Everyone get in line, everyone get in line, everyone get in line,' And I just wanted to rip that all apart and remind people that people and individuals are what matter, and their will matters and their preferences matter and good health matters."

That includes, he says, safety of the controversial Covid vaccines.

In January, he said the Food and Drug Administration had failed to examine unique risks, and he concluded that “these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings."

Dr. Ladapo isn’t the only esteemed medical figure who bucked the establishment over Covid and is now allied with now President -elect Donald Trump.

Others who’ve been speaking with Trump officials about taking a role in the new administration include Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. 

He was among the first to formally organize opposition to the shutdowns. He also co-authored The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition that raised concerns about establishment Covid response strategies and was signed by over 63,000 scientists and medical practitioners.

Also, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a top British cardiologist. He became an activist on Covid vaccine safety after he says his father, also a cardiologist, died from the vaccine.

Another person who stands to factor in, in a big way, is attorney and children’s health advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He joined the Trump campaign with a “Make America Healthy Again” mantra. He may take on a new role to oversee an end to corruption in public health agencies.

Asked what he'd want to accomplish in the Trump administration, Dr. Ladapo told me that good leadership is essential and implied heads will likely roll at CDC, FDA, and National Institutes of Health, if he has any say so.

“Oftentimes these organizations have a culture," he said. "And it's not like a culture with a little 'c'; it's a culture with a capital 'C.' And it's not personal, but those people can't be part of the organization if the organization's going to change."

Ladapo says his clinical experience treating patients would also help separate him from others, such as the current leader at the Department of Heath and Human Services, Xavier Becerra. Becerra, a lawyer, is the first Hispanic to be HSS secretary. Before that, he was a Democrat party official in Congress.

For more, watch “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” and check out Sharyl’s new bestseller “Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails."