The RFK Jr. Congressional Hearing Was An Unmitigated Disaster

from the 4-alarm-fire dept

Well, that was certainly a thing. We mentioned yesterday that RFK Jr. was scheduled to go before the Senate Finance committee to answer all kinds of questions as to just what in the holy hell is happening at HHS. As we said, this was always going to be a contentious hearing, given that the Democrat Senators are aligned, and in fact demanded his resignation before the hearing, while even GOP members such as Bill Cassidy have begun signaling wavering support for Kennedy.

But this wasn’t just contentious; it was a disaster. USA Today has one of many live update pages where you can go back and relive the timeline, but the topline summary is that Kennedy shouted over the Senators questions, often asked them questions instead of answering the questions he was asked, dissembled all over the place when asked direct and honest questions, and otherwise spouted conspiracy theories without a scintilla of evidence to back them up. And while it’s certainly true that questions from Democracts were done in a more hostile tone than those from the GOP, the open disdain, or at least concern, about Kennedy’s actions as of recent was entirely bipartisan.

I’ll give you some highlights, for lack of a better term, along with a summary of the key thing we learned in each highlight.

Mark Warner (D):

1. Kennedy claims neither he, nor anyone else, has any idea how many Americans died from COVID-19
2. Kennedy is unwilling to state that COVID vaccines did “anything” to prevent deaths from COVID-19
3. Kennedy was unaware of some specific implications of the latest budget bill on American healthcare

John Barrasso (R):

1. Barrasso points out all the chaos and failure that has happened under Kennedy, including the largest measles outbreak in decades.
2. Kennedy claims that CDC vaccine guidance has never before, in the history of the agency, been “clear, evidence based, and trustworthy.” He claims his leadership is the first time this will ever have happened.

This, by the way, is precisely how you get situations like unhinged people shooting up the CDC’s Atlanta campus. The CDC was born in 1946, initially to combat malaria. But, according to Kennedy, it has never in its entire history been trustworthy on the topic of vaccines. It’s a lie, of course, but those that believe it would logically be very, very pissed off.

Thom Tillis (R):

1. Tillis starts off by saying he’s going to make a statement and essentially begs Kennedy to not respond in the moment, but to go and gather his answers after the hearing and present them. Kennedy repeatedly attempts to answer those questions anyway.
2. Tillis points out that based on the myriad of conflicting statements Kennedy made within the hearing, he has no idea whether Kennedy thinks Operation Warp Speed was a good thing or not. On the one hand, Kennedy agrees with Tillis and others that Trump should be a Nobel prize for the government’s efforts in creating the mRNA vaccines. On the other, Kennedy claims the vaccines were deadly and can’t account for them being effective at all.
3. Tillis asks how a CDC Director can be lauded a month ago and fired four weeks later.
4. Tillis asks for evidence that Kennedy has kept any of the promises he’s made to Congress in the past.
5. Tillis points out that all he can get out of Kennedy’s HHS to a question about the economic impact of the budget bill that was passed amount to “word salad.”
6. Kennedy affirms his position that the COVID vaccines cause “serious harm” and “death”.

Folks, that’s as polite a way for a GOP Senator to state publicly that they don’t trust Kennedy as is possible.

Bernie Sanders (I):

This one takes a brief bit of preamble. When Senator Warren was questioning Kennedy about his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as Director of CDC, she asked Kennedy about Monarez’s public claim in a WSJ editorial that he demanded she sign off on what ACIP would recommend prior to them even meeting and insisted she fire a slew of senior staffers at CDC for who knows what reason. Kennedy told Warren that was not true and, when she asked what was the reason he fired her, got this in response.

That is obviously not a believable story. I mean, to make light of it, why would an untrustworthy person tell their boss they were not trustworthy instead of lying?

In any case, with that context, we move on to the takeaways from the back and forth with Bernie Sanders.

1. Kennedy reiterates his claim that Monarez lied about why she was fired and that, again, he did so because she told him she was not trustworthy.
2. Kennedy calls a net -$100 million investment in rural healthcare “the largest infusion of public money” into rural healthcare.
3. Kennedy affirms the COVID vaccines are the deadliest vaccines in history and that Trump should get a Nobel prize for helping develop them.
4. Kennedy launches into a conspiracy theory in which the largest NGOs and others that disagree with him have all been corrupted by the pharma industry.

Bill Cassidy (R):

Cassidy is the one many of us were waiting to see in this hearing, for multiple reasons. He’s a doctor, for instance. He was a pivotal vote in Kennedy’s confirmation hearings and extracted several promises about vaccines and policy during those hearings. And, finally, several other Republican Senators have pointed to him as the one they trust on healthcare and medicine issues.

1. Kennedy again affirms that Trump deserves a Nobel prize for Operation Warp Speed, despite saying those vaccines killed people. Cassidy then points out that Kennedy sued to limit access to COVID vaccines before his time in government.
2. Cassidy points out that the ACIP conflicts of interests data that Kennedy has claimed was wildly inaccurate. Kennedy attempts to argue the point, but fails.
3. Cassidy points out that several current ACIP members, which Kennedy hand-picked, serve as paid witnesses in vaccine injury trials and asks Kennedy if that is a conflict of interests. Kennedy responds it may be a bias, but not a financial conflict of interest, which makes zero sense.
4. Stick around for the end in which Cassidy shares some personal interactions he’s had with constituents demonstrating precisely how Kennedy’s policy actions have introduced a limitation of vaccine access and chaos and confusion among doctors as to what they can prescribe or not, which is exactly what we indicated would happen.

There was much, much more. More dissembling. More conspiracy theories. More lies. By any honest viewing of the hearing, it was a bipartisan verbal indication of no confidence in Kennedy, with some Senators choosing to be more polite about it than others. This was a more pointed and thorough takedown of Kennedy from both sides of the aisle than even I had hoped for.

So of course the White House is pretending this is all a partisan hitjob because Kennedy is so awesome.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Kennedy after he faced tense questioning by both Democratic and Republican senators.

The Health secretary “is taking flak because he’s over the target,” she said on X several hours after the hearing concluded. “The Trump Administration is addressing root causes of chronic disease, embracing transparency in government, and championing gold-standard science.”

Although she blamed Democrats for attacking “that commonsense effort,” Republican senators such as Cassidy and Barrasso had also expressed disapproval during the hearing with some of Kennedy’s most recent actions concerning vaccines.

As I said in a previous post, this is by no means the end of Kennedy’s tenure at HHS. But it just might be the beginning of that end. No amount of White House gaslighting is going to be able to counter rising illnesses, full hospitals, or explosive growth in the casket manufacturing business.

Filed Under: autism, bernie sanders, bill cassidy, cdc, covid, elizabeth warren, health and human services, john barrasso, mark warner, rfk jr., thom tillis, vaccines