By S.A. McCarthy
The Washington Stand
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced two U.S. Senate Finance Committee this week, in a pair of hearings whether or not he will be confirmed as President Donald Trump’s Secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In order to proceed to a full Senate confirmation vote, Kennedy needs the support of a majority of both the 25-member Finance Committee, which grilled him on Wednesday, and the 21-member Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which had a turn on Thursday. Republicans make up a majority on each committee. In both hearings, the controversial Kennedy fielded questions on subjects ranging from abortion and vaccine injuries to fast food and spiritual warfare. Here are four highlights from Kennedy’s dual hearings.
‘Every Abortion Is a Tragedy’
Kennedy’s record on abortion is a varied one, which has given rise to concerns among some Republicans about placing the former Democrat in charge of the top health agency in the U.S. Although he identifies as a Catholic and has referred to himself as “pro-life,” his presidential campaign last year saw Kennedy tacitly endorse abortion “even if it’s full-term.” However, Kennedy adopted a firmer stance in defense of the unborn during Wednesday’s hearing.
“I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy. I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year,” Kennedy insisted, in response to questions from Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.). He continued, “President Trump has told me that he wants to end late-term abortions and he wants to protect conscience exemptions and that he wants to end federal funding for abortions here or abroad. … I serve at the pleasure of the president. I’m going to implement his policies.” However, Kennedy also took Trump’s position that “the states should control abortion,” a position which has caused some dismay among conservatives.
Kennedy also shared that he intends to investigate the use of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone. “We need to understand the safety of every drug, mifepristone and every other drug,” he said. He explained, “I mean, it’s against everything we believe in in this country, that patients or doctors should not be reporting adverse events. We need to know what adverse events are.” Kennedy reported that Trump has “made it clear to me that he wants me to look at the safety issues and I’ll ask NIH [National Institutes of Health] and FDA [Food and Drug Administration] to do that.”
Senator Ron Wyden (R-Ore.) challenged Kennedy’s allegation that mifepristone is harmful, arguing that studying the drug’s effects is a political ploy. “The science was clear then, it’s even clearer today. Mifepristone is safe,” he claimed. Wyden continued, “The only reason it’s under question in 2025 is because people with a political agenda have been out lying about it.”
During Thursday’s hearing, Kennedy further committed to ending federal funding for all research that uses the tissue or body parts of aborted babies. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) asked Kennedy if he would “commit to protecting stem cell research for scientific agencies if confirmed.” The HHS nominee responded that he would, observing that stem cell research does not need to be conducted using the tissue of unborn children. “Stem cell research today can be done on umbilical cords and you don’t need fetal tissue,” he observed.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) then asked Kennedy, “will you reinstate President Trump’s policy that ensures that no federal research and no federal tax dollars is conducted on fetal tissue taken from elective abortions?” Kennedy very simply replied, “Yes.”
Scientific Scrutiny or Conspiracy Theorizing?
Kennedy also rebuffed claims that he is an “anti-vaccine” conspiracy theorist. Since the mid 2000s, Kennedy has been an outspoken advocate of more thorough and rigorous testing for vaccines, claiming that vaccines are not currently being properly tested, resulting in numerous side effects and injuries, including autism, food allergies, and even cancer.
On Wednesday, Kennedy was questioned over his comments on vaccines. One such question focused on the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa, particularly allegations that Kennedy’s vocal vaccine skepticism contributed to the spread of the disease. “Let me explain what happened in Samoa,” he remarked. “In Samoa, in 2017 or 2015, there were two kids who died following the MMR vaccine. And the vaccination rates in Samoa dropped precipitously from about 63% to the mid 30s, so they’ve never been very high.”
Two more children died in 2018, Kennedy said, with their deaths linked to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. “I arrived a year later when vaccination rates were already below any previous level. I went there, nothing to do with vaccines,” he reported. He continued, “I never gave any public statement about vaccines, you cannot find a single Samoan who will say ‘I didn’t get vaccinated because of Bobby Kennedy.’ I went in June of 2019, the measles outbreak started in August.”
Wyden accused Kennedy, “The receipts show that Mr. Kennedy has embraced conspiracy theories, quacks, and charlatans, especially when it comes to the safety and efficacy of vaccines. He’s made it his life’s work to sow doubt and discourage parents from getting their kids life-saving vaccines.” He asked, “Are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine?” Kennedy responded, “I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking anything.”
He also faced accusations from Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) of “peddling half-truths, peddling false statements.” For example, Bennet accused Kennedy of spreading “conspiracy theories” surrounding the origins of various illnesses. “Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon?” the senator asked. Kennedy replied. “I probably did say that.”
In a separate exchange, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked Kennedy three times to commit to not suing vaccine manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has served as both the chairman of and legal counsel to Children’s Health Defense for years and has been responsible for bringing numerous lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies. In response to Warren’s demands, Kennedy said, “I’m not going to agree to not sue drug companies or anybody.”
The HHS nominee began Thursday’s hearing by heading off concerns over his views on vaccines. “I want to make sure this committee is clear about a few things,” he said in his opening statement, repeating a caveat he issued Wednesday. He explained, “News reports and many in [Wednesday’s] hearing have claimed that I’m anti-vaccine and anti-industry. Well, I’m neither. I’m pro-safety. I’m pro-good science.” He later said that if he were presented with data proving his claims regarding vaccines wrong, he would actually apologize for his statements. “I will never stick on a point if someone shows me data that I am wrong,” he said.
Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), however, sided with Kennedy on vaccine skepticism. “I’ve had my first granddaughter — here in a couple weeks — and my son and his wife have done their research about vaccines and she’s not going to be a pin cushion. We’re not going to allow that to happen,” he stated. He added that scientists need to thoroughly examine the safety of vaccines, saying, “Let’s not just do something for the pharmaceutical companies.”
Kennedy also lambasted senators for accepting campaign funding from pharmaceutical companies during Thursday’s hearing. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pressed Kennedy to commit to a universal health care coverage system, pointing out the seeming corruption that exists in many health insurance companies and the federal agencies that oversee them. Kennedy responded, “The problem of corruption is not just in the federal agencies. It’s in Congress too. Almost all the members of this panel are accepting — including yourself — are accepting millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry and protecting their interests.”
Sanders claimed, “Not one nickel of PAC money from the pharmaceutical industry. They came from workers.” Nonetheless, Kennedy noted, “In 2020, you were the single largest receiver of pharmaceutical money.” He said that Sanders had accepted $1.5 million in campaign funding from drug manufacturers, to which Sanders responded, “Yeah, out of $200 million.”
Make America Healthy Again
While Trump campaigned on the promise to “make America great again,” Kennedy pledged, after endorsing Trump, to “make America healthy again.” He reiterated that pledge during Wednesday’s hearing. “President Trump has asked me: end [the] chronic disease epidemic and make America healthy again,” Kennedy declared. “Trump has asked me, because I’m in a unique position to end that, and that is what I’m doing,” he added. He continued, “And if we don’t solve that problem … all of the other disputes we have about who’s paying and whether it’s insurance companies, whether it’s providers, whether it’s HMOs, whether it’s patients or families, all of those are moving deck chairs around on the Titanic,” Kennedy quipped. “Our ship is sinking.”
Kennedy observed that COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. accounted for 16% of COVID-19-related deaths globally, even though the U.S. accounts for less than 5% of the world’s population. “We had a higher death count than any country in the world. And when CDC was asked why, they said it’s because Americans are the sickest people on Earth. The average person who died from COVID, American, had 3.8 chronic diseases,” Kennedy stated. He continued, “And it is a priority for President Trump, and that’s why he asked me to run the agency, and if I’m privileged to be confirmed, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
According to Kennedy, chemical food additives are a chief factor in America’s chronic disease epidemic. “Kellogg’s makes Fruit Loops for the United States alone that is loaded with red dye, blue dye, yellow dye, and many, many other ingredients,” Kennedy said Thursday. He noted, “They make the same product for Canada — it’s all vegetable dyes.”
Loose Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations aren’t the only way that dangerous chemical additives get into American, food, though, Kennedy continued. He also observed that chemical pesticides and livestock hormone treatments mandated on American farms contribute to chronic disease. “We are losing farmers today. We can’t afford to lose a single farmer. On my watch, I do not want to lose a single farmer. We have to offer farmers an off-ramp from chemically intensive agriculture, which they don’t want to do,” Kennedy stated. He added, “There’s illness all over the farm community, and it’s undoubtedly related to the intensity of chemical pesticides.”
However, Trump’s pick to lead the HHS insisted that he doesn’t want to indiscriminately ban foods. In addition to removing harmful chemical additives from most foods, Kennedy said that simply being made aware of the health impacts of certain foods is also crucial. “I don’t want to take food away from anybody. If you like a McDonald’s cheeseburger or Diet Coke — which my boss loves — you should be able to get them,” he said, referring to Trump’s well-known love of McDonald’s. He continued, “If you want to eat Hostess Twinkies you should be able to do that, but you should know what the impacts are on your family and on your health.”
‘A Divine Purpose’
In his opening statement Wednesday, Kennedy declared, “The first thing I’ve done every morning for the past 20 years is to get on my knees and pray to God that He would put me in a position to end the chronic disease epidemic and help America’s children.” A self-professed Catholic and the nephew of the nation’s first Catholic president, Kennedy acknowledged that what is done with the body impacts the soul. “This is not just an economic issue, it’s not just a national security issue, it is a spiritual issue and it is a moral issue,” he said of ending chronic disease in the U.S. He continued, “We cannot live up to our role as an exemplary nation, as a moral authority around the world, when we’re writing off an entire generation of kids” and subjecting them to chronic diseases in a way that no previous generation has suffered.
Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) told Kennedy Wednesday, “I believe for such a time as this, that you’re not just one of 300 million people, I think that you are the person to lead HHS to make America healthy again, that God has a divine purpose for you.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
