In public confirmation hearings last month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the nation’s health agencies, confirmed that he said Lyme disease is highly likely an engineered bioweapon, refused to say that vaccines don’t cause autism and stumbled to identify the basic aspects of Medicare and Medicaid.
The claim about Lyme disease is a decades-old conspiracy theory, dozens of studies have shown no link between vaccines and autism and Medicare and Medicaid are multitrillion-dollar programs that Kennedy would oversee.
According to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, Kennedy’s claims in a private meeting with her ahead of his confirmation hearings were even more troubling.
Murray, who has been in the Senate for 32 years, said her talk with Kennedy was the single most troubling meeting she’s ever had with a Cabinet nominee.
The two met in Murray’s office Jan. 15. It’s customary for nominees to meet with senators before they are up for a confirmation vote.
“I walked out from my meeting with him because he threw out so many nonsense, nonsensical questions and statements that it was head-spinning,” Murray said.
Among the claims Kennedy made, according to Murray: He said 99% of COVID deaths were in people who were vitamin D deficient; he said we “haven’t done safety studies on vaccines”; and he said “there is an entire generation of damaged children.”
“I’m looking at him and as I challenge him, he doesn’t flinch, he just leaned into all of these outrageous claims,” Murray said. “I was really stunned. I have interviewed Cabinet members for a very long time from Republican and Democratic administrations. They are usually very well-prepped. They know who they’re talking to, they are ready to answer tough questions.”
Kennedy did not respond to an email, sent through his former presidential campaign, seeking comment.
Washington’s two Democratic senators, Murray and Sen. Maria Cantwell, have both announced they will oppose Kennedy’s nomination. Cantwell, after his public hearings, said she had wanted to support his nomination, but couldn’t after hearing Kennedy’s response to a Republican senator’s question.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a medical doctor, asked Kennedy to state unequivocally that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism.
Kennedy declined, instead saying “if the data is there, I will absolutely do that.”
“He couldn’t even give him the answer,” Cantwell said in a prepared statement, “that yes, the data is there to support vaccines today.”
Kennedy’s criticism of vaccines goes back decades. In his confirmation hearings he said he is not “antivaccine.”
Murray said in her meeting she presented Kennedy with a number of his past statements and rather than defend or retract the statements he simply denied making them.
She said she asked about his statement that he would fire 600 people from the National Institutes of Health on Day One of the Trump administration.
“He said, ‘Oh, I didn’t say that,’” Murray said. “And I’m sitting there looking at a quote that he said it. So it was the most bizarre, unbelievable way for anybody to present themselves as somebody that was legitimate and qualified.”
Kennedy, at an event in Arizona after the election in November, said: “We need to act fast, and we want to have those people in place on Jan. 20 so that on Jan. 21, 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH, and 600 people are going to leave.”
As health secretary, Kennedy would have vast power over the nation’s vaccine programs, including the ability to cut off contracts with vaccine-makers who supply the vaccines for more than half the country’s children.
But as troubling as the material effect he could have on vaccinations, Murray said, is the message that his Senate confirmation would send.
“That will send a message to families in this country,” she said. “The fact that he doesn’t believe that vaccines are safe will be heard by people, and that will affect and impact the health of our country for generations to come.”
