The nomination hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. kicked off with a battle between President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), as the Democrat confronted Kennedy over his past controversial comments about vaccines and other issues.
Kennedy appeared before the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday morning to answer questions about his views and qualifications for the role overseeing America’s health care system, and Wyden was one of the first to toss questions at the nominee.
The senator began by entering into the record a letter from Kennedy’s cousin, Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy and the former U.S. Ambassador to Australia. In the letter urging senators to vote against confirming her cousin, Caroline Kennedy eviscerated him as a “predator” who “lacks any relevant government, financial, management or medical experience” and holds views on vaccines that are “dangerous and willfully misinformed.”
Wyden then confronted Kennedy with several of his past quotes about vaccines:
Mr. Kennedy, you have spent years pushing conflicting stories about vaccines. You say one thing and then you say another. In your testimony today, under oath, you denied that you were anti-vaccine. But during a podcast interview in July of 2023, you said, quote, “no vaccine is safe and effective.”
In your testimony today, in order to prove you’re not anti-vax, you note that all your kids are vaccinated. But in a podcast in 2020, you said, and I quote, you “would do anything, pay anything to go back in time and not vaccinate [your] kids.”
Mr. Kennedy, all of these things cannot be true. So are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine? Or did you lie on all those podcasts? We have all of this on tape, by the way.
Kennedy claimed that his comments on the Lex Fridman podcast had been “repeatedly debunked” because it was “a fragment of the statement he asked me,” saying that Fridman asked him, “Are there vaccines that are safe and effective?” and then he offered this reply:
And I said to him, “some of the live virus vaccines are.” And I said, “there are no vaccines that are safe and effective.” And I was going to continue for every person, every medicine has people who are sensitive to them, including vaccines. So he interrupted me at that point. I’ve corrected it many times, including on national TV. You know about this, Senator Wyden. And so bringing this up right now is dishonest.
That is an inaccurate recollection of how that podcast conversation unfolded, and shrugs off his many other comments urging parents not to vaccinate their children, accusing the government of falsifying studies, and advocating against vaccines that have been used safely for decades.
Wyden brought up Kennedy’s “history of trying to take vaccines away from people,” like when he petitioned the Food and Drug Administration in May 2021 “to not only block Americans from having access to the Covid vaccine, but to prevent any future access to the lifesaving vaccine.”
“Are you denying that?” Wyden asked. “Your name is on the petition!”
Kennedy claimed that the petition was brought “after the CDC recommended the Covid vaccine without any scientific basis for six year old children,” and claimed (again, inaccurately) that “most experts agree” that the vaccines were “inappropriate for six-year-old children who basically have a zero risk from Covid.”
Wyden interjected about “the facts” as some protesters began yelling from the back of the hearing room and were removed.
“Those facts are on the record,” about Kennedy’s petition to block access to the vaccine, continued Wyden before turning to how Kennedy had “made almost $5 million from book deals, mostly promoting junk science,” and read a quote from his book about measles:
In 2021, in a book called the measles book, you wrote that parents had been, quote, “misled into believing that measles is a deadly disease and that measles vaccines are necessary, safe and effective.” The reality is, measles are in fact deadly and highly contagious, something that you should have learned after your lies contributed to the deaths of 83 people, most of them children, in a measles outbreak in Samoa.
So my question here is, Mr. Kennedy, is measles deadly? Yes or no?
Kennedy replied that the U.S. death rate in 1963 from measles was 1 in 10,000 and claimed that he “had nothing to do with the measles” outbreak in Samoa, claiming his visit was about “introduc[ing] a medical informatics system that would digitalize records in Samoa and make health delivery much more efficient.”
“I never gave any public statement about vaccines,” he insisted. “You cannot find a single Samoan who will say, I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy.”
Wyden attempted to interject again as Kennedy said “let me finish” and then claimed the tissue samples from the people who died in Samoa were sent to New Zealand and “most of those people did not have measles,” and claimed there were similar outbreaks in Tonga and Fiji but “no extra people died.”
Again, this is inaccurate. His organization, Children’s Health Defense, posted about the deaths of the two Samoan infants on its Facebook page, insinuating that was proof the vaccines were dangerous, and Kennedy met with prominent Samoan anti-vaccine activists, who posted on social media touting his support.
“Mr. Chairman, I would like to get my time back,” Wyden cut off Kennedy. “The nominee wrote a book saying that people had been misled into believing that measles is a deadly disease. He’s trying now to play down his role in Samoa. That’s not what the parents say. That’s not what Governor Greene says. It’s time to make sure that we blow the whistle on actually what your views are. At least we’re starting.”
“I support the measles vaccine,” Kennedy retorted. “I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS Secretary, that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking it.”
“Anybody who believes that ought to look at the measles book you wrote, saying parents have been misled into believing that measles is a deadly disease,” Wyden said to conclude his question period. “That’s not true!”
In 2022, Aaron Siri, an attorney who has worked closely with Kennedy and organizations allied with him, filed a petition to have the FDA revoke approval of the polio vaccine, in addition to petitions he filed advocating to pause distribution of 13 other vaccines and lawsuits he filed challenging vaccine testing. Siri argued that the polio vaccine should be revoked because of the lack of placebo-controlled trials. The polio vaccine has been administered safely for decades and conducting a trial now with placebos would entail condemning children to be exposed to polio without protection, risking paralysis and even death. Kennedy himself has baselessly argued that the polio vaccine makes people more susceptible to getting polio, and argued that vaccines in general make people “lose IQ.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
