Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before the Senate Finance committee on the day of his confirmation hearing as Secretary of Health and Human Services, surrounded by ardent supporters and anti-vaccine campaigners.
Kennedy attempted a delicate balancing act in the face of growing criticism from Democrats, doctor’s groups, and public health officials (as well as some skepticism from some Republicans). He defended and denied his contentious past as a well-known anti-vaccine lawyer while promising to be a responsible steward for an agency with 80,000 employees, a $1.8 trillion budget, and the health of the country at stake.
I would like to clarify a few points for the Committee. I have been accused by the media of being anti-industry or anti-vaccine. In his opening remarks to the committee, Kennedy stated, “I am pro-safety, but I am neither.” I think vaccines are essential to healthcare, and all of my children have had them.
These remarks, as well as the majority of what Kennedy would say during the course of the following four hours, were very different from the years’ worth of recorded positions he had, such as advocating against vaccination for all parents of infants. Some members of the anti-vaccine movement had traveled to Washington for the hearing and the celebrations that followed, and that dissonance did little to dampen the enthusiasm.
For years, Kennedy has avoided using the term “anti-vaccine” in the mainstream media, but he has expressed his views on vaccines in more ideologically supportive settings. He claimed that vaccines had caused his children to develop food allergies in a 2020 podcast for his nonprofit anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, and that he wished he could go back and alter his mind about getting them vaccinated. When Kennedy ran for president in 2023, he took a leave of absence from Children’s Health Defense and left the organization in December.
In 2020, he questioned, “What would I do if I could go back in time and avoid giving my children the vaccines that I gave them?” I would do anything to avoid giving them those vaccines. To be able to accomplish that, I would pay anything.
“I wouldn’t take that risk,” he continued.
Kennedy stated on the Health Freedom for Humanity podcast in 2021 that while he and other activists had avoided using the term “anti-vaccine,” they were now publicly opposing vaccines.
It is our responsibility to oppose and to discuss it with everyone. I’m not a busybody, so if you’re strolling down the street and I do something myself, I don’t want to do it. Kennedy stated on the show, “I see someone on a hiking trail with a small baby and I tell him, Better not get him vaccinated.” And I told that to him. Perhaps he won’t do it if ten other people tell him about it; perhaps he will save that child.
However, he changed his mind at today’s hearing, responding to a number of inquiries concerning his history of arguing in favor of vaccinations and the present school calendar.
Kennedy has attempted—possibly successfully—to live in two different universes since declaring his intention to run for president. Kennedy has stated that he is not anti-vaccine and pledged not to remove vaccines off the market while serving as Health Secretary in interviews with major media outlets and before legislative committees. Kennedy has, however, depended on the anti-vaccine movement’s covert assistance, hiring anti-vaccine leaders such as Del Bigtree, the head of the anti-vaccine group Informed Consent Action Network, who now leads a super PAC (MAHA Alliance) and a nonprofit organization (MAHA Action) devoted to promoting Kennedy’s confirmation, to staff his unsuccessful presidential campaign. In November, Bigtree posted that Kennedy and MAHA were being strategic with their subdued discussion of vaccinations, implying that Kennedy is still committed to the anti-vaccine movement.
Bigtree claimed that Bobby had been dragged through the mud for more than ten years in order to violate his morals once he entered the castle.
Bigtree was not involved in the transition, and his opinions do not reflect those of Mr. Kennedy’s or President Trump’s administration, Katie Miller, a spokesman for Kennedy’s transition team, told NBC News in December.
The fervor of the anti-vaccine movement has not been dampened by any aloof denials of Bigtree. Bigtree’s MAHA group organized a celebration at the Hyatt hotel in the evening and a Pack the Halls for HHS Confirmation event at the Capitol on Wednesday morning.
Activists, self-described autism mothers, and longtime opponents of vaccines who hold the unproven theory that vaccines cause autism also gathered around Kennedy on Wednesday.
As Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan invested millions of her own funds in his unsuccessful presidential campaign. On Tuesday, she posted a video cautioning senators against voting nay. She named 13 senators and declared, “I will personally fund challengers to primary you in your next election.”
Zen Honeycutt, the head of Moms Across America, is an anti-vaccine and anti-GMO activist who posted from the hearing. She was seated in the row directly behind Kennedy’s family, next to Megyn Kelly, a Republican podcaster, and Laura Bono, the recently retired executive vice president of Children’s Health Defense.
The reason for this is that YOU mothers have been advocating for decades! posted by honeycutt.
The hearing was streamed live on the websites of Children’s Health Defense and the Informed Consent Action Network. A video of President Mary Holland interviewing supporters outside the chamber before to the hearing was shared by Children’s Health Defense. According to Holland and Polly Tommey, director of programming, the hearing was a crucial and emotional time for their team.
“My child will finally receive some justice,” Toomey stated on Tuesday’s Children’s Health Defense morning show.
Holland answered, “It’s not over til it’s over.”
Senators questioned Kennedy about Children’s Health Defense on multiple occasions. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders stood out for bringing up a blown-up picture of a baby onesie that the anti-vaccine group, Unvaxxed, Unafraid, marketed for $26.
Kennedy retorted, “I have no authority over that organization.” I’m in favor of vaccinations.
In favor of Kennedy’s nomination, anti-vaccine groups have been putting on advocacy campaigns for weeks, encouraging people to call their senators and organizing in-person events.
Susan Sweetin, director of development and communications for the National Vaccine Information Center, the oldest anti-vaccine organization still in existence, developed a website last Friday to promote another in-person action. Kennedy, who responded to her text offering to bring people to the hearing with YES, was the one who prompted Sweetin to organize the show of support, according to a former reporter who was well-known for spreading conspiracy theories concerning the AIDS virus. A tsunami.
Sweetin, who was contacted by text, stated that Kennedy’s text-based comments were a part of a private conversation. A request for comment regarding the event was not answered by Miller, Kennedy’s aide on the Trump transition team.
According to the website, the National Vaccine Information Center’s strategy was to be in line before dawn in order to guarantee most, if not all, of the seats in the hearing room. Wearing green lanyards or other items from Kennedy’s official store was required of supporters. (Kennedy’s newly filed financial disclosure report states that he made $100,000 last year from licensing fees for official MAHA products.)
Kennedy states that once ladies began attending speaking engagements with tales of their autistic children who claimed that vaccines had harmed them, he became a serious opponent of vaccines in 2005. In a 4,700-word piece published in Rolling Stone magazine, he developed a notion that scientists, public health officials, and the pharmaceutical industry had colluded to conceal the truth regarding vaccination harms. The paper was eventually removed after being supplemented with a number of changes highlighting mistakes and misleadingly manipulated transcripts in Kennedy’s work.
However, the conspiracy notion persisted, playing a major role in the Children’s Health Defense organization Kennedy created, the multiple books he has written about the topic, and the countless anti-vaccine lawsuits he has filed or recommended to businesses. Kennedy has made millions of dollars from the anti-vaccine movement, according to his nonprofit tax filings and financial disclosure forms.
A slew of failures slowed the momentum of the anti-vaccine campaign. Scientific studies consistently demonstrated the safety of vaccines, and the primary study supporting the idea that they were unsafe was withdrawn due to erroneous data. However, during the pandemic, their popularity increased among conservatives who believed that vaccination laws and public health campaigns violated their rights.
On Wednesday, that Republican backing was evident in the committee hearing chamber.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Republican who emerged as one of the country s most prominent pandemic-era vaccine skeptics, heaped praise on Kennedy and invoked false theories about vaccines leading to chronic illness and neurological conditions.
Coming together with Trump, and focusing on an area of agreement, something that the American people desperately want, finding out the answers, What has caused autism, what is causing chronic illness? “My initial reaction was, Bobby, this is a response to my prayers,” Johnson said.
There was little indication that Kennedy’s fans were offended by his separation from their movement, as those gathered behind him applauded his Senate allies and mocked his detractors. The chair repeatedly asked the gathered audience to be silent and courteous.
While Kennedy walked back his past statements about the issue that united them and disavowed the movement he led, he didn t abandon them altogether.
This movement, led largely by MAHA moms from every state you can see many of them behind us today and in the hallways and in the lobbies, is one of the most transcendent and powerful movements I ve ever seen, Kennedy said.