After celebrating Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), out Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) continues to defend the former presidential candidate.

Kennedy has no background in medical science and is known for his wacky, anti-scientific approach to health, which includes opposition to vaccines and sunscreen, health interventions that have saved millions of lives. Kennedy himself has a history of poor health, which included a parasitic brain worm that resulted in “mental fogginess and memory loss.”

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Yet Polis seems to think he has the potential to improve American health.

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“We’ve seen a lot of Cabinet appointments that are very dangerous and threatening to the country from the incoming president, but I always try to look at the glass as half full,” he recently told CNN, adding that Kennedy “said some false and outright dangerous claims about vaccines and vaccines that have saved millions of lives” but, “at the same time, we have to remember the last time Trump was president, he appointed a pharmaceutical lobbyist as the head of this agency, literally the fox guarding the hen house.”

“I truly believe that RFK is not beholden to big pharma,” Polis continued. “I think he’s an independent voice, and I think he’s somebody who means what he says when he cares about reducing chronic disease through better nutrition… If he focuses on that he can do some good for public health.”

Polis emphasized that he “would strongly oppose” any anti-vaccination efforts from Kennedy, but also said he thinks Kennedy won’t try to end vaccination because that’s what Kennedy said recently.

Yet, Kennedy has been a prominent voice in the anti-vaccine movement, which is based on pseudoscience and uses misinformation to spread the belief that vaccines don’t prevent disease. He is a member and the chair of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization that claims that autism, ADHD, food allergies, cancer, and autoimmune disease are caused by vaccines.

Kennedy and Children’s Health Defense spread misinformation in 2018 in Samoa that led to a decline in the vaccination rate, which was followed by an outbreak of measles in which 57,000 people were infected and 83 people – including children – died.

Folks on social media have expressed shock and disappointment at the Democratic governor’s views, accusing Polis of sucking up to the MAGA party.