Photo: Alamy
Amid what seemed like a cacophony of Senate Democrats’ yelling over him, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr stood his ground on vaccine and health policy as he seeks to pursue an agenda to “Make America Healthy Again.”
Since taking his position at the HHS, Kennedy has moved swiftly to enact that agenda – he has implemented widespread CDC firings, canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in mRNA research projects, and sought to identify and expose the underlying causes of the autism epidemic in American children.
During Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Kennedy addressed the shakeup at the CDC, noting, “[These] changes were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold standard public health agency with the central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease.”
He continued, “[The CDC] failed that responsibility miserably during Covid when its disastrous nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools – caused generational damage in doing so – masked infants with no science…America is home to 4.2 percent of the population; we had nearly 20 percent of the Covid deaths. We literally did worse than any country in the world, and the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.”
Following a hostile line of questioning from Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), who cited the American Academy of Pediatrics and accused Kennedy of politicizing vaccine science at the expense of children’s health, the secretary fired back.
“I think the American Academy of Pediatrics is gravely conflicted,” Kennedy said. “Their biggest contributor is the four largest vaccine makers…I wouldn’t, put a big stake in what they say.”
At one point, Secretary Kennedy remarked, “You’ve sat in that chair for how long? 20-25 years? While the chronic disease in our children went up to 76 percent, and you said nothing. You never asked the question, ‘Why is this happening?’ Today, for the first time in 20 years, we’ve learned that infant mortality has increased in our country – it’s not because I came in here, it’s because what happened during the Biden administration, that we’re going to end.”
Later, when Democrat Sen. Mark Warner (Va.) asked Kennedy if the Biden administration “politicized” Covid data, Kennedy’s answer was succinct.
“Yeah…they fired all of the people who questioned the orthodoxy!” Kennedy said.
At the end of the day, Kennedy’s message was simple and straightforward: the CDC’s credibility has been shot, and his mission is to restore the “gold standard” of trusted science.
“Right now, there’s only 10 percent of children [who] are compliant with the CDC’s recommendation on Covid boosters…so Americans have lost faith in CDC,” Kennedy said. “And we need to restore that faith, and we’re going to do that by telling the truth and not through propaganda, by making them understand that everything that we say is true, we’re going to tell them what we know, we’re going to tell them what we don’t know, and we’re going to tell them what we’re researching and how we’re going to do it – and we’re going to be transparent!”
