JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Scientists have endorsed the efficacy of vaccines for quite literally hundreds of years.

It's always worth noting that George Washington and himself had his troops vaccinated for smallpox.

So, naturally, in the year 2025, the secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., spent a day debating vaccination with various senators of both parties.

He also spent a good deal of time answering questions about his management of the agencies responsible for protecting the nation's health, including and especially the Centers for Disease Control.

In normal times, these extraordinary arguments would be the only news we'd be talking about, but this is also the week we saw China, Russia, and America's now possibly former quasi ally, India, create a tacit alliance against Trump.

Joining me tonight at the table to discuss all of this, Elizabeth Bumiller, a writer at large at The New York Times, Leigh Ann Caldwell is the chief Washington correspondent for Puck, Stephen Hayes is the editor of The Dispatch, and Vivian Salama is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Thank you all for joining me.

I appreciate it.

Let me start with a very basic question, just to level set.

Elizabeth, what is RFK's unvarnished view of vaccines?

How much of an extreme view does he actually have?

ELIZABETH BUMILLER, Writer at Large, The New York Times: Well, he has one of the most extreme public views in the country, I would say, among an official.

It's a little hard to know exactly where he is because he said in his confirmation hearings that he was not going to stand in the way of people having access to vaccines, the COVID vaccine.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

ELIZABETH BUMILLER: However, that exactly where he is right now, and it caused the huge disturbance and huge shouting at the hearing this week, where he basically said that the vaccine had killed more people than it saved, he said very strange things.

He -- you know, he said that the head of the CDC who he had fired had said she was -- she couldn't be trusted, and senators said, but you're lying.

So, you know, we know, for example, that he has been vaccinated.

We know his children have been vaccinated, but yet he doesn't seem to want the rest of the country, or at least most people in this country to be vaccinated.

And it's caused it to -- you know, right now we're seeing, you know, states now are, like in New York and Massachusetts, are saying we're going to be giving the vaccine to everybody who wants it.

But it's caused a big mess nationally as the, you know, COVID season is upon us.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Steve, how popular is this, as a position among the Republican base?

STEPHEN HAYES, Editor, The Dispatch: More popular than it was ten years ago.

I think the reason that RFK Jr. has the position he has is because he has decades of experience being anti-vaccine.

This is what gave him a follow and gave him a constituency and ultimately led to this deal with RFK Jr. and Donald Trump.

It's why he is where he is today.

There's polling that shows Republicans, and this is increasingly partisan, of course, polarized, because everything is, shows Republicans are increasingly skeptical of vaccines as these arguments are made public.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: More than just the COVID vaccine?

STEPHEN HAYES: More than just the COVID vaccine.

Yes, we saw Ron DeSantis, we saw a movement in Florida this week to end the mandates for vaccines for kids in schools.

I think there's growing skepticism among Republicans, but not as much as you might think.

I mean, still three quarters of Republicans, according to most polling, support widespread vaccines.

So, the skepticism that we've seen hasn't gotten to the point where Republicans are running away from all vaccines.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Leigh Ann, let me ask you this question.

Tell them, I'll call them back.

This is the strange thing to me.

Arguably, the greatest achievement of Donald Trump's first term was Operation Warp Speed, which brought about the vaccines that allowed us to exit the pandemic.

What interest does Trump have here in putting forward RFK and his rather radical views of vaccines?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, Chief Washington Correspondent, Puck: Yes, it's really complicated for Donald Trump.

As Stephen said, RFK Jr. is a big reason why Donald Trump was elected, this coalition of the MAHA-MAGA base really propelled him to win this election.

But then he has this major success with Operation Warp Speed, which it was reported this week that Donald Trump has privately told supporters that he wishes he could talk about it more.

And you're also seeing a little bit of angst and anxiety from the president when he speaks about things publicly.

He had a Truth Social this week where he said, what is happening at the CDC?

If what -- if these vaccines are good, these pharmaceutical companies need to come forward and show us.

They're not telling the American public that things are safe.

And then also just tonight, he was asked by reporters in the Oval about the Florida mandate, about stripping the mandate for vaccines in schools.

And he said that that could actually be quite problematic because some vaccines are actually quite helpful.

He pointed to polio specifically.

But with all that said, while Trump seems to be torn, RFK Jr.'s job does not seem to be in jeopardy by any stretch of the imagination.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I want to come back to that question and then, but let's talk about the Senate hearings.

I want you all to watch the -- one of the many heated exchanges between a Democratic senator and RFK.

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., HHS Secretary: I don't know how many died.

MARK WANRER: You are the secretary of Health and Human Services.

You don't have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: I don't think anybody knows that because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC, and there was -- (CROSSTALKS) MARK WARNER: You don't know the answer of how many Americans from COVID?

This is the secretary of Health and Human Services.

Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Again, I would like to see the data and talk about the data.

I'm not -- MARK WARNER: You had this job for eight months and you don't know the data about whether the vaccine saved lives?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: And that's the problem, is that they didn't have the data.

The data by the Biden administration, absolutely dismal.

(CROSSTALKS) JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Vivian, how would you grade his performance?

VIVIAN SALAMA, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: It is exactly what -- I mean, I'm not going to give him a grade, but I say it wasn't surprising that this, these were his answers because he has repeatedly justified the massive cuts to the Health and Human Services Department because of claims like this that he says the data was not reliable, the people who were compiling the data were not reliable or qualified enough to do so.

And so this is something that we heard repeatedly on Thursday while he was testifying, is that the data was not reliable.

You don't know how many people died of COVID because none of the data was reliable, but also the people who were running the CDC and HHS were not qualified people.

He even called the now former CDC director a liar at some points because she claimed, and she wrote in The Wall Street Journal in an editorial that she was being pushed to empower the views of recommendations of anti-vaxxers.

And this essentially politicized the department.

This was a problem that they saw.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Steve, is this -- does he have any foundation to stand on when he talks about the unreliability of the data, are we just an Alice in Wonderland?

STEPHEN HAYES: Well, look, I mean, I think you can say, you know, was it 1.2?

Was it 1.24?

Of course, we don't know probably to the exact person.

But, no, I mean, this is well established.

It's on the CDC and the HHS websites, the government's estimates of how many people died, and the effectiveness of vaccines.

Now, this is something that RFK Jr. does all the time.

He did it in his pre government life as he's making the case against vaccines, is he pretends that there's no data.

You know, there could be dozens of peer reviews, study peer-reviewed studies on topic X and he would say, well, we really don't know.

We need to wait for the data.

The data is often there.

He just doesn't want to accept it.

And he uses this.

He sort of injects confusion into the debate, I think, to muddy the waters about the efficacy of things like vaccines.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Elizabeth, Vivian wouldn't give him a grade, but maybe you will, not a grade.

Don't give a grade.

Just it seemed like he was very I think the word would be lippy with the Democratic senators.

ELIZABETH BUMILLER: Yes, he was.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That plays well, I guess, among MAGA people, people who don't like the Democrats.

It does seem like a bit of a distraction for Trump who has other things that he cares about more than vaccine fighting.

ELIZABETH BUMILLER: Well, that's what's so interesting.

Trump has not come out and given him a big defense at all.

You know, he says -- he hasn't said he is doing a great job.

He did a great job in the hearing.

He's been very silent, notably.

And that's not that's interesting.

And as we talked about before, you know, Operation Warp speed was one of, you know, a triumph of the Trump administration and also the Biden administration later.

But, you know, here, he has this -- yes, he's very pleased to have a Kennedy in this cabinet.

You know, he had a Democrat in his cabinet, a big name like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

He -- but this was not a good performance.

I think Trump was very into television.

I can't believe he watched this and thought this was good for him.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Is that what this is about, having a Kennedy in the cabinet?

VIVIAN SALAMA: There's a lot of that, and Trump has not made a secret of that.

He's repeatedly said that he loves having a Kennedy, but it has to be said.

And just to echo Elizabeth, it's very interesting to see that Trump has allowed him to sort of carve out a piece of the pie.

Trump has really owned the MAGA movement, but this MAHA movement, Make America Healthy Again, that now is really owned by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is something that has gotten Trump's blessing, but he's sort of telling him, you do you, you do your own thing, we'll stay over here as MAGA people.

And he allows him to kind of operate adjacent but separate from what MAGA is doing, and that is really telling.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Leigh Ann, I want to show the panel Senator Barrasso, the number two Republican in the Senate.

This is not Mark Warner, a Democrat, talking about MAHA or talking about the having a fight over vaccines.

This is a very high ranking Republican who also happens to be a physician.

Let's just listen to him for one minute.

SEN. JOHN BARRASSO (R-WY): In your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines.

Since then, I've grown deeply concerned.

The public has seen measles outbreaks, leadership of the National Institute of Health questioning the use of mRNA vaccines, the recently confirmed director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired.

Americans don't know who to rely on.

If we're going to make America healthy again, we can't allow public health to be undermined.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Does this put RFK Jr.'s position in danger?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: I don't think so.

I think that this hearing was an opportunity for these senators to express their concerns and their discontent with RFK Jr., especially, you know, Barrasso is a doctor, so he needed to be on the record for that.

And perhaps he's having private conversations with the Trump administration or with the president about RFK Jr.

But I don't think that this is going to be the thing right now yet that senators are going to go to bat for to break with the present and to really pressure him to get rid of his HHS Secretary.

One thing that is going to be important to watch is that, which Barrasso said in his hearing is in a couple weeks, the CDC Advisory - - Vaccine Advisory Board is going to meet about children vaccines, and there's going to be a lot of senators who are going to pay a lot of attention to that.

But RFK Jr., like I said, I don't think his job's in jeopardy right now.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Let's talk about the CDC for a minute on not the political level but the actual practical level.

Many, many people fired across divisions, many people who have quit in disgust or in protest.

Give us a sense of the CDC and its, to borrow a term, efficacy as the world's leading preventer of disease.

ELIZABETH BUMILLER: Well, it's in shambles right now.

There's -- all the experts, all the four or five top scientists have left.

The secretary of Health and Human Services has just completely undermined it to large portion of the American public by saying it can't be trusted.

It's corrupt.

Those words matter to a lot of people in the United States.

And so it is -- we are in -- you know, I have heard so many health experts say in the last couple weeks, we are in terrible trouble in the United States in terms of our public health.

They say this is the worst situation they've seen in a hundred years.

On top of RFK Jr., you know, pulling half a billion dollars for mRNA research, which is not just about vaccines, it's about fighting a lot of other diseases, that's been stopped.

And then he is also, you know, questioning the efficacy of the measles vaccine, which -- so this is a dangerous time.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Steve, is this a bill that's just going to come due in some terrible way?

STEPHEN HAYES: I mean, it's hard to imagine that it isn't.

I mean, I think some of it is what negative consequences are we likely to see from this.

I think the CDC is much less effective today than it was eight months ago because of the departures that we've seen.

More than 2,000 people have either been fired or have left on their own accord.

The other question is, what progress aren't we making?

Elizabeth mentions the, it was $500 million in mRNA research that was pulled back in August.

That was funding research and very promising research into cancer.

MRNA, one of the benefits of it is it's quick and it's adaptive.

So, you can make progress quickly.

This is one of the reasons that the COVID vaccine was as successful as it was.

You can make progress very quickly to fight any of a number of things.

We're not doing the research that we once were doing.

So, what progress are we not making at this point?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: And I also think that what could happen is we're going to have red states and blue states with completely different vaccine policies.

As we've talked about already tonight, Florida is the first state to move forward with stopping the requirement of vaccines in schools.

You have Washington, Oregon, and California who are coalescing around what they say is science and going to move forward and continue to study and offer vaccines.

But diseases also don't adhere to state lines.

And so this is a broader public health issue.

But, again, it's going to be completely more -- another thing that divides this country into what state you live in.

VIVIAN SALAMA: And when that happens, you erode the public's trust in public health.

I mean, and that's the big issue here.

Do I get my child vaccinated?

Will my elderly relative have access to chronic disease care?

All of these things now could be thrown into jeopardy, just even to trust that you know what to do or who to believe.

That's what experts are saying could really take a hit the most.

STEPHEN HAYES: And I have to say, I mean, some of that is earned, right?

I mean, if you look back on COVID, some of the things that we heard from public health experts who we were told to trust, they didn't adapt to new data.

They did say things that were untrue, including Anthony Fauci early, about the efficacy of masks because he wanted to preserve PPE.

So, some of that I think is earned.

And certainly among the right, there's this growing skepticism.

But it's also the case, I think, that this is the goal of RFK Jr. here.

He wants to sow this mistrust because he doesn't trust them himself.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But what is -- this is an impossible question probably to answer, but what is his vision of a future in which we don't have a CDC or an FDA or an effective NIH?

We're all going to get healthy because we're not eating food dies anymore?

I ask this seriously.

What's the -- STEPHEN HAYES: He says we were lied to by everybody about everything during COVID.

Now, that's, of course, not true, but he doesn't trust any of those people.

So, I think to answer your question directly, he would think it's a better world if we don't have to listen to the experts who occupy those -- VIVIAN SALAMA: He's aiming to reinvent it.

STEPHEN HAYES: Absolutely, he wants to remake American healthcare, American public health.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Obviously a subject we'll come back to.