RFK Jr. Misleads During Senate Hearing

The key aspect of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is his last name: “Kennedy.”

During his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, President Trump’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services faced numerous inquiries about the various opinions he has expressed and actions he has taken that seem to make him ill-suited for the role.

As expected of any Kennedy, his responses were filled with evasions, misleading statements, and outright falsehoods.

In his opening remarks, Kennedy attempted to deflect the most significant controversy surrounding his nomination.

“I believe that vaccines are essential to healthcare,” he stated.

“All of my children are vaccinated. I’ve authored several books on vaccines; my first one from 2014 starts and ends with ‘I am not anti-vaccine.’”

If only stating it made it true.

Kennedy’s extensive history indicates that he embodies the very thing he claims he is not.

While he highlighted his children’s vaccination status at the hearing, he has previously claimed he would do anything and pay any amount to undo that reality.

In 2021, he remarked that he warns others about vaccinations by saying, “Better not get them vaccinated” when he sees parents with infants.

Moreover, he is the founder and former head of an anti-vaccine organization known as “Children’s Health Defense,” which is currently promoting a film titled “Vaxxed III: Authorized to Kill.”

In another significant moment during the hearing, Kennedy faced probing about his involvement in worsening a measles outbreak in Samoa, which resulted in the deaths of over 80 individuals, predominantly young children, in 2019.

Kennedy visited the island nation in June of that year at the behest of another anti-vaccine activist, following the deaths of two infants due to improper vaccinations.

When questioned on Wednesday, Kennedy insisted that his trip had “nothing to do with vaccines” and claimed he “never issued any public statements about vaccines.”

However, this contrasts with the Samoan Ministry of Health’s statement.

“It is well documented that RFK Jr.’s visit to Samoa in 2019 coincided with heightened anti-vaccine sentiments, particularly among specific groups,” the Ministry stated.

Furthermore, after the outbreak, Kennedy tried to leverage this tragedy to influence the Samoan Government towards adopting anti-vaccine policies.

“It is essential for the Samoan Health Ministry to determine, through scientific means, if the outbreak resulted from insufficient vaccine coverage or, alternatively, from a faulty vaccine,” wrote Kennedy in a letter to the Prime Minister.

There he was again, merely asking questions.

Kennedy’s efforts to justify his own statements — indeed, his life’s work — faltered in many other instances.

When questioned about his assertion that Covid-19 could have been genetically engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese individuals, Kennedy claimed he was simply quoting an NIH study.

The reality? He stated that the virus “targets” Caucasians and Black individuals, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese populations “are most immune.”

As for whether it was engineered to do so, Kennedy suggested that remained an open question.

“We don’t know if it was intentionally targeted or not,” he added.

When asked about his series of exaggerated, reckless comparisons while promoting his misleading narratives, he denied ever making them.

Yet, recorded statements reveal he has equated the CDC’s determination not to classify autism as an epidemic to “Nazi death camps,” and compared the agency’s priorities to those of fascist regimes and the Catholic Church’s “pedophilia scandal.”

And then there’s his duplicitous stance on abortion, which senators from both parties confronted on Wednesday.

“I agree with him [President Trump] that we cannot be a moral country with 1.2 million abortions a year,” proclaimed Kennedy at the hearing.

If that’s his stance, why did he voice support for full-term elective abortions on the campaign trail less than a year prior?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is many things that his renowned family disapproves of: a controversial figure, a source of embarrassment, and, most consequentially, an ally of the Republican Party.

But his most disgraceful characteristic—one that was prominently on display on Wednesday—is shared with the rest of his family: he is a power-hungry charlatan willing to say anything to ascend to the next rung on the ladder.