4 major moments from RFK Jr.’s contentious hearing with senators

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was at the center of a maelstrom Thursday as senator after senator, including those who voted to confirm him, raised pressing questions over his public health agenda.

Tension was thick at the Senate Finance Committee hearing. Crosstalk and shouting ensued as senators, some of them doctors, demanded explanations for Kennedy’s controversial actions in his first eight months as the nation’s top health official.

Among them: High-profile resignations and firings at agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A changing U.S. vaccine policy that would limit access for some Americans as the country heads into peak respiratory illness season. Replacing a key panel of medical experts with hand-picked candidates with anti-vaccine stances.

Multiple senators grilled Kennedy over contradictory statements, especially about vaccines and the national COVID response. A few asked him to resign. Kennedy, defiant and at times dismissive, objected to their characterizations of his decisions.

“This is crazy talk. You’re just making stuff up,” Kennedy said as Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., questioned him about the new restrictions on COVID shots.

“Sometimes when you make an accusation, it’s kind of a confession, Mr. Kennedy,” Hassan said. Kennedy laughed.

Undergirding the heightened scrutiny was a call for Kennedy’s resignation from more than 20 medical societies and organizations, and a column from former CDC Director Susan Monarez, who wrote in The Wall Street Journal that her firing last week was part of a “deliberate effort to weaken America’s public-health system and vaccine protections.”

Here are four big moments from the hearing.

1. Kennedy blasts CDC response to COVID

Watch the video in the player above.

Justifying the recent CDC shakeup, Kennedy said these changes were “absolutely necessary adjustments” to restore the agency as a global leader in fighting infectious diseases.

“CDC failed that responsibility miserably during COVID,” he said, adding that “oppressive and unscientific interventions failed to do anything about the disease itself.”

Kennedy also defended his decision to fire the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the group responsible for making vaccine recommendations. He claimed this was because of “conflicts of interest.”

“You replaced them with non-experts, vaccine skeptics and conspiracy theorists. As a result, this critical advisory panel has lost scientific credibility,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., responded.

Watch the clip in the player above.

During questioning from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Kennedy alleged that the federal government had lied to the American public about the effectiveness of vaccines and masks.

“The whole process was politicized, senator. I mean, we were lied to about everything,” said Kennedy, a former anti-vaccine advocate who has spread misinformation about vaccines and autism.

The health secretary claimed the federal government, including the CDC, lied about the “science behind cloth masks” and COVID vaccines preventing transmission and infection.

Many of those allegations are false or misleading. During the pandemic, the CDC advised people to wear the most effective masks available, including N95 and KN95 respirators, surgical masks or homemade cloth masks, which the agency said were “inferior” but “a suitable option for community use when medical masks are unavailable.” And in early 2021, the CDC’s official guidance was that vaccines only “reduce the risk of people spreading COVID-19.”

2. Disagreements over data and science

Watch the clip in the player above.

Kennedy was pressed on his understanding of COVID and how vaccines helped save lives.

“Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID?” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., asked.

“I don’t know how many died,” Kennedy said. “I don’t think anybody knows.”

Kennedy cited “data chaos” at the CDC as a barrier to knowing this information, despite the agency having the specific number — more than 1.2 million Americans died of COVID — on its website.

Warner followed up by asking the health secretary if he believed vaccines had prevented COVID deaths. (This number, too, exists and was later cited by a Republican senator during the hearing.)

“I would like to see the data and talk about the data,” Kennedy said.

“How can you be that ignorant?” Warner shot back.

Watch the clip in the player above.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., brought up last week’s announcement that the COVID vaccine is no longer approved for healthy people under the age of 65. (People with “high-risk” health conditions are able to get the vaccine.) Kennedy said anyone could still get the vaccine, but “both things cannot be true at the same moment,” Warren said.

The senator wanted clarification.

“Will you tell America that all adults and all children over 6 months of age are eligible to get a COVID booster at their local pharmacy today?”

“Anybody can get the booster,” Kennedy insisted.

Warren said if the vaccine isn’t recommended by the nation’s top health agency, that means people in many states couldn’t walk into a pharmacy and get the shot, or that insurance companies won’t be obligated to foot the bill.

Kennedy said, as he did earlier in the hearing, that he wasn’t taking vaccines away from people.

3. Two Republican doctors were measured in their criticism

Watch the clip in the player above.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., was a crucial confirmation vote for Kennedy. Despite some initial misgivings over Kennedy’s deep-seated skepticism of vaccines, the senator — also a doctor — ultimately backed Kennedy to lead HHS.

In today’s hearing, Cassidy asked Kennedy if he agreed that Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed, the 2020 initiative that quickly developed COVID vaccines.

“Absolutely, senator,” the health secretary said.

This surprised Cassidy, who asked why Kennedy would think so highly of Operation Warp Speed when the health secretary has attempted to restrict access to the vaccines and cancelled funding for mRNA vaccine research that was critical to the initiative’s mission.

Watch the clip in the player above.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., another doctor on the committee, said he is “deeply concerned” since Kennedy has taken over as health secretary.

The senator cited measles outbreaks, leadership at the National Institutes of Health questioning the use of mRNA vaccines, and the White House’s recent ouster of CDC director Susan Monarez (more on that below).

Barrasso then asked what safeguards are in place to “ensure decisions are based solely on science and not politics.”

“Americans have lost faith in CDC, and we need to restore that faith, and we’re going to do that by telling the truth and not through propaganda,” Kennedy said. “I’m making them understand that everything that we say is true.”

Toward the end of his questioning, Cassidy asked to submit some documents for the record, including an email from a physician and friend who was concerned about who will be able to get the vaccine. Though Kennedy cannot outright ban vaccines, changes to the CDC’s recommendations and guidelines could make it more difficult for Americans to access. This was something that other senators, including many Democrats, on the committee have voiced throughout the hearing.

“We’re denying people vaccines,” Cassidy said.

Kennedy’s response to the chair was simply, “You’re wrong.”

Some Republicans on the committee praised Kennedy for what he’s done so far in office. He reserved his most biting words for Democrats, such as dismissing Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico for “not understanding how the world works” or shouting back at Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota.

4. Kennedy accuses ousted CDC director of ‘lying’

Watch the clip in the player above.

The recent firing of the CDC director was another contentious topic in the hearing.

Warren said Monarez refused to sign off on Kennedy’s changes to the childhood vaccine schedule. The health secretary said she resigned because “I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person,’ and she said no.”

Warren was shocked at Kennedy’s response, saying that was not what Monarez had said publicly.

“So you are saying she’s lying?” Warren asked.

“Yes,” Kennedy said, repeating an accusation he made earlier in the hearing about Monarez’s claim that she was fired because she “held the line and insisted on rigorous scientific review.”